Essay date: April 6, 2019



Put the DEA on Trial

for crimes against humanity




the DEA has lied about psychedelics for almost for almost half a century now, needlessly depriving the depressed of godsend rain forest medications

hen it comes to the DEA, I say, "LOCK THEM UP!"

Before saying goodbye to the DEA, we should publicly try its leadership in court for having knowingly barred millions of depressed Americans from receiving priceless therapy. How did the DEA do this? By scheduling these drugs based on political motivations, completely ignoring to this day the well-documented benefits of drugs like LSD and psilocybin to change lives for the better in a positive and medically monitored setting. The drugs that the DEA says have no benefits have inspired entire religions and been used by such luminaries as Benjamin Franklin and Marcus Aurelius, HG Wells and Jules Verne, these two duos have enjoyed opium and coca wine respectively. Plato got his view of the afterlife
from the psychedelic-fueled Eleusinian Mysteries. And the Vedic religion was inspired by psychoactive plant medicine.

In other words, the DEA is knowingly lying about these substances when it says they have no potential beneficial uses. They are thereby denying hundreds of millions around the world of godsend medicine, since imperialist America enforces its jaundiced Christian Science view of psychoactive medicine around the globe by financial blackmail and threat of invasion -- except, of course, in countries like Russia and China, whose dictators love the Drug War because it gives them an excuse to crack down still further on their own people as politics demands.


Liberal critics of the Drug War keep saying that it's failed, but the Drug War never had a right to succeed.

It was wrong from the start to ban naturally occurring substances, the gifts of Mother Nature, the birthright of humanity, especially when these substances are banned for political motives. If Americans have any birthright, they surely have a right to the medicinal and nourishing output of Mother Nature and cannot be rightfully separated from that bounty by coercion.


Richard Nixon's political assessment of such drugs remains on the books today, thanks to the fact that the self-dealing DEA, an agency that exists to "fight drugs," is the same organization tasked with deciding the legal status of drugs. That's the mother of all conflicts of interests, one that will continue to eat away at the democratic process until the DEA is excised from the body politic.


But there's one class of Drug War victim that's rarely recognized today: that is the millions of depressed persons who have gone without effective medications for decades now thanks to Richard Nixon's politically motivated scheduling and slandering of psychoactive substances.


What's the cause of depression in America?

The DEA. By denying Americans the medicines that have been shown to dramatically ease that malady.

But the DEA will only be held accountable when politicians start valuing patient outcomes over political outcomes.

While we're at it, we should try Former DEA chief John C. Lawn personally for crimes against humanity. He was the agency head who poisoned marijuana in the '80s with paraquat, a weed killer that has since been shown to cause Parkinson's disease. (You'll recall that the weed-friendly Robin Williams acquired that disease shortly before his death.)






May 20, 2022

Brian (bless him) apparently wrote this before the real penny dropped, before he recognized, that is, that the Drug War was a violation of the Natural Law upon which Thomas Jefferson founded America. For we know that John Locke himself (Jefferson's "go-to" man on Natural Law) declared in his Second Treatise on Government that human beings have a right to "the use of the land and all that lies therein." So we might say that the criminalization of the poppy plant in 1914 was the original sin of the Drug War, by means of which America (and sadly the entire world) adopted an irrational and anti-scientific attitude toward psychoactive substances that has ever since produced nothing but violence and (ironically) addiction, partly because it emphasizes fear over education and partly because prohibition cleared the way for Big Pharma to create a psychiatric pill mill to addict America. As I write this, one in four American women must take a Big Pharma med every day of their life, some of which are harder to kick than heroin. Why? Because they muck about with brain chemistry by causing the chemical imbalances that they purport to fix (see Anatomy of an Epidemic by Richard Whitaker.)

Speaking of Jefferson, that reminds me of another crime for which the DEA should be punished: the fact that they stormed onto Jefferson's estate at Monticello in 1987 and confiscated the founding father's poppy plants, thereby enacting a daylight coup against the very concept of Natural Law, a disgrace to which the Monticello Foundation readily acceded, thereby disowning and dishonoring the very Jeffersonian legacy that they pretend to be protecting.

Here's another reason to throw DEA officials into the same overcrowded jails in which they have locked up millions of minorities for the last half-century: because Americans know from the liquor wars that prohibition creates violence, and yet the DEA has continued quite knowingly to promote that deadly policy, thereby creating gangs and cartels just as surely as liquor prohibition created the Mafia, bringing about the deaths of over 800 black Chicagoans by gun violence in 2021 alone, for as Heather Ann Thompson wrote in The Atlantic in 2014: "Without the War on Drugs, the level of gun violence that plagues so many poor inner-city neighborhoods today simply would not exist."

Let's add to that charge the deaths in the civil wars in South America that our imperialistic prohibition has created out of whole cloth, and the above-mentioned addiction crisis, and the fact that the Drug War censors science, and that it leaves millions -- indeed billions -- around the globe without godsend medicines, some of which grow at their very feet. Oh, did I mention that the Drug War created the gangs and cartels over which we Americans hypocritically wring our hands today, just as surely as liquor prohibition created the Mafia.

It's time therefore to hold the DEA hierarchy personally responsible for crimes against humanity -- as well as crimes against Americans in particular, from whom they have unconstitutionally taken away our Jeffersonian natural right to the bounty of Mother Nature.

June 22, 2022

Did I mention that the DEA steals elections for fascists by disfranchising millions of minorities, and why? Because they used plant medicine of which racist politicians disapprove, this despite the fact that the medicines in question have inspired entire religions in the past.

The Drug War is all about making Americans fear psychoactive substances rather than understand them. Joe Biden's Office of National Drug Control Policy actually FORBIDS the consideration of positive news about substances that the government has demonized as "drugs." Scientists are forbidden to research these scapegoat substances, which is a censorship worse than the Church practiced on Galileo, since Galileo at least REALIZED that he was being censored. Americans have been so bamboozled by over 100 years of "drug" demonization that they don't even realize that their freedom has been emasculated by an anti-scientific plot to scapegoat medicines that have inspired entire religions -- thereby blinding America to countless potential treatments and cures for everything from Alzheimer's to depression.

Next essay: The Drug War and Electroshock Therapy
Previous essay: Puritanical Assumptions about Drug Use in the Entertainment Field

More Essays Here


essays about
THE MENDACIOUS AND HARM-CAUSING DEA

A Goliath that even David is afraid of
Rat Out Your Neighbors
Twelve Reasons why the DEA should be abolished
The Dark Side of the Monticello Foundation
Open Letter to Congressman Ben Cline, asking him to abolish the criminal DEA
Defund the DEA
The DEA: Poisoning Americans since 1973
The DEA's War on Alzheimer's Research
How the DEA determines if a religion is true
Running with the DEA -- er, I mean the Devil
Torture 101 at DEA University
DEA Guilty of Crimes Against Humanity
Mycologists as DEA Collaborators
Running with the torture loving DEA
The DEA Scheduling System is Based on Lies
Drug War Bait and Switch



...end the war on drugs. Shop today. And tomorrow.


Monticello Betrayed Thomas Jefferson


In 1987, the Monticello Foundation invited the DEA onto the property to confiscate Thomas Jeffersons poppy plants, in violation of the Natural Law upon which the gardening fan had founded America

The Drug War Censors Science - Bumper Sticker


Drive the point home that the Drug War censors scientists -- by outlawing and otherwise discouraging research into the kinds of drugs that have inspired entire religions.

Protest The Dea Bumper Sticker


Millions have needlessly suffered over the last 50 years because the DEA has lied about psychedelics, claiming that they are addictive and have no therapeutic value. Stop the lies, start the research.

Reincarnation is for Has-Beens


In a former life, I bought this bumper sticker myself. My friends got quite a kick out of it, as I recall!
5% of proceeds from the sale of the above product will go toward getting Brian a decent haircut for once. Honestly. 9% will go toward shoes. 50% will go toward miscellaneous. 9% of the remainder will go toward relaxation, which could encompass anything from a spin around town to an outdoor barbecue at Brian's brother's house in Stanardsville (both gas and the ice-cream cake that Brian usually supplies).

Nature Abhors a Vacuum - drink tile


Actually, Nature likes several of the latest Dyson models, but those are really the exception to the rule.

I Brake for Honeybees


Do your part to fight Colony Collapse Disorder: Show the honey bees your true feelings with this unBEElievable bumper sticker

Thinking of You


Face it, even your friends sometimes tick you off: Show them your true feelings with this novelty gift card -- and don't worry, the inside text reads: PSYCH! Just kidding.

What Would Socrates Do - bumper sticker


What would Socrates do if he drove a BMW? He'd sell it at once to show he wasn't tempted by luxury -- but he'd keep the kewl bumper sticker designed by Quass.com that came with it.



href="https://www.abolishthedea.com/">AbolishTheDEA.com

old time radio playing Drug War comedy sketches





You have been reading essays by the Drug War Philosopher, Brian Quass, at abolishthedea.com. Brian is the founder of The Drug War Gift Shop, where artists can feature and sell their protest artwork online. He has also written for Sociodelic and is the author of The Drug War Comic Book, which contains 150 political cartoons illustrating some of the seemingly endless problems with the war on drugs -- many of which only Brian seems to have noticed, by the way, judging by the recycled pieties that pass for analysis these days when it comes to "drugs." That's not surprising, considering the fact that the category of "drugs" is a political category, not a medical or scientific one.

A "drug," as the world defines the term today, is "a substance that has no good uses for anyone, ever, at any time, under any circumstances" -- and, of course, there are no substances of that kind: even cyanide and the deadly botox toxin have positive uses: a war on drugs is therefore unscientific at heart, to the point that it truly qualifies as a superstition, one in which we turn inanimate substances into boogie-men and scapegoats for all our social problems.

The Drug War is, in fact, the philosophical problem par excellence of our time, premised as it is on a raft of faulty assumptions (notwithstanding the fact that most philosophers today pretend as if the drug war does not exist). It is a war against the poor, against minorities, against religion, against science, against the elderly, against the depressed, against those in pain, against children in hospice care, and against philosophy itself. It outlaws substances that have inspired entire religions, Nazifies the English language and militarizes police forces nationwide.

It bans the substances that inspired William James' ideas about human consciousness and the nature of ultimate reality. In short, it causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, meanwhile violating the Natural Law upon which Thomas Jefferson founded America. (Surely, Jefferson was rolling over in his grave when Ronald Reagan's DEA stomped onto Monticello in 1987 and confiscated the founding father's poppy plants.)

If you believe in freedom and democracy, in America and around the world, please stay tuned for more philosophically oriented broadsides against the outrageous war on godsend medicines, AKA the war on drugs.

Brian Quass
The Drug War Philosopher
abolishthedea.com

PS The drug war has not failed: to the contrary, it has succeeded, insofar as its ultimate goal was to militarize police forces around the world and help authorities to ruthlessly eliminate those who stand in the way of global capitalism. For more, see Drug War Capitalism by Dawn Paley. Oh, and did I mention that most Drug Warriors these days would never get elected were it not for the Drug War itself, which threw hundreds of thousands of their political opposition in jail? Trump was right for the wrong reasons: elections are being stolen in America, but the number-one example of that fact is his own narrow victory in 2016, which could never have happened without the existence of laws that were specifically written to keep Blacks and minorities from voting. The Drug War, in short, is a cancer on the body politic.

Rather than apologetically decriminalizing selected plants, we should be demanding the immediate restoration of Natural Law, according to which "The earth, and all that is therein, is given to men for the support and comfort of their being." (John Locke)

Selected Bibliography

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  • Boullosa , Carmen "A Narco History: How the United States and Mexico Jointly Created the 'Mexican Drug War'"2016 OR Books
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    • Lovecraft, HP "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" 1970 Del Rey Books
  • Mariani, Angelo "Coca and its Therapeutic Application, Third Edition"1896 Gutenberg.org
    • Mate, Gabriel "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction" 2009 Vintage Canada
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  • Miller, Richard Lawrence "Drug Warriors and Their Prey: From Police Power to Police State"1966 Bloomsbury Academic
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  • Newcombe, Russell "Intoxiphobia: discrimination toward people who use drugs"2014 academia.edu
    • Noe, Alvin "Out of our Heads" 2010 HiII&Wang,
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    • Poe, Edgar Allan "The Essential Poe" 2020 Warbler Classics
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  • Shulgin, Alexander "PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story"1991 Transform Press
  • Shulgin, Alexander "The Nature of Drugs Vol. 1: History, Pharmacology, and Social Impact"2021 Transform Press
    • Slater, Lauren "Blue Dreams: The Science and the Story of the Drugs that Changed Our Minds" 2019 Boston
  • Smith, Wolfgang "Cosmos and Transcendence: Breaking Through the Barrier of Scientistic Belief"0
  • Smith, Wolfgang "Physics: A Science in Quest of an Ontology"2022
  • St John, Graham "Mystery School in Hyperspace: A Cultural History of DMT"2021
    • Straussman, Rick "DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences " 2001 Park Street Press
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    • Szasz, Thomas "Ceremonial Chemistry: the ritual persecution of drugs, addicts, and pushers" 1974 Anchor Press/Doubleday
  • Szasz, Thomas "Interview With Thomas Szasz: by Randall C. Wyatt"0
    • Szasz, Thomas "Our Right to Drugs: The case for a free market" 1992 Praeger
    • Tyler, George R. "Billionaire Democracy: The Hijacking of the American Political System" 2016 Pegasus Books
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  • Wedel, Janine "Unaccountable: How the Establishment Corrupted Our Finances, Freedom and Politics and Created an Outsider Class"2014 Pegasus Books
  • Weil, Andrew "From Chocolate to Morphine: Everything You Need to Know About Mind-Altering Drugs"2004 Open Road Integrated Media
    • Whitaker, Robert "Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America " 2010 Crown
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    • Zuboff , Shoshana "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power" 2019 Public Affairs
    Site and its contents copyright 2023, by Brian B. Quass, the drug war philosopher at abolishthedea.com. For more information, contact Brian at quass@quass.com.