Essay date: November 6, 2022



Rat Out Your Neighbors

brought to you by America's DEA




Comedy Sketch about the disgraceful DEA

ADDERALL ZOLOFT: Welcome to Rat Out Your Neighbors. I'm DEA field agent Adderall Zoloft, joined today in Washington by bureau chief Paxil Buspar. How are you today, Paxil?

PAXIL BUSPAR: I'm drug free, Adderall. How about you?

ADDERALL ZOLOFT: Drug free and proud of it.

PAXIL BUSPAR: I've made some coffee. Help yourself.

ADDERALL ZOLOFT: Fantastic!

Wait, aren't you having any?

PAXIL BUSPAR: Are you kidding me? I'm already buzzing like a top, thanks to these Red Bull Colas I've been throwing back all morning.

Oh, pardon me.

ADDERALL ZOLOFT: Sounds like an angel just got his wings.

PAXIL BUSPAR: Or a DEA agent just got his first M-4 assault rifle.

ADDERALL ZOLOFT: Primed and loaded, baby.

PAXIL BUSPAR: Kicking down America's doors since 1914.

ADDERALL ZOLOFT: Let's go straight to the phones now. The number, as always, is 1 800-RAT-BAIT. That's 1 800-RAT-BAIT. Call right now to rat out your friends and loved ones for using substances of which our government disapproves.

PAXIL BUSPAR: Wow, that was fast. Looks like we've got a caller already.

ADDERALL ZOLOFT: Hello there. You are on Rat Out Your Neighbors. Who are the scumbags that you would like to report?


CALLER: Yes, I'd like to report my creative writing teacher at college.

ADDERALL ZOLOFT: I see. And what evil substance have you seen them using? I'm guessing coca or pot, right?

CALLER: Worse yet. It's opium.

PAXIL BUSPAR: Ex-squeeze me?


ADDERALL ZOLOFT: What? You mean they're using the substance whose name must not be spoken?

CALLER: Well, I haven't yet actually caught them in the act of using opium yet, but...

PAXIL BUSPAR: Please, don't use that word.

ADDERALL ZOLOFT: Yes, caller. You see, here at the DEA, we call it "the substance whose name must not be spoken."

CALLER: But he keeps going on about how opium can be used wisely to engender creativity.

PAXIL BUSPAR: What?

CALLER: And telling us how the stories of Poe and Lovecraft, for instance, are full of so-called opiate imagery.

ADDERALL ZOLOFT: And what imagery would that be, exactly?

CALLER: You know, like in the short story "Celaphais"
by HP Lovecraft, in which the protagonist, and I quote, wanders through...


"the spectral summer of narcotic flowers and humid seas of foliage that bring wild and many-coloured dreams."



PAXIL BUSPAR: Blasphemy.

CALLER: I know, right?


PAXIL BUSPAR: But I'm afraid that you really have to catch this professor with the goodies before we can kick down his door and scare his children and elderly grandmother to death.

ADDERALL ZOLOFT: I feel for you, caller, but it's not yet quite illegal to speak about positive uses of evil substances like... like... you know what.

CALLER: You mean like opium?

PAXIL BUSPAR: Stop saying that word!

ADDERALL ZOLOFT: Yes, caller, like the substance whose name must not be spoken.

CALLER: Sorry about that.

PAXIL BUSPAR: It's all good. Just keep an eye on this professor of yours and maybe even record his classes for us.

ADDERALL ZOLOFT: Yeah, then send us the tape when he incriminates himself.

CALLER: But isn't that illegal?

PAXIL BUSPAR: Illegal? That's a good one.

ADDERALL ZOLOFT: You're talking to the DEA, caller. Where there's a will, there's a way, right?

PAXIL BUSPAR: Yeah, haven't you seen those movies like "Running with the Devil," where we hang suspects from meat hooks and shoot them in cold blood at point-blank range?

CALLER: Oh, right.

ADDERALL ZOLOFT: That's why we're overseen by a drug czar, baby, so that everyone will know that we're going to play fast and loose with the U.S. constitution.

PAXIL BUSPAR: Because we're bad, we're bad, shamon, shamon!

CALLER: Do what?

ADDERALL ZOLOFT: And we're also out of time.

PAXIL BUSPAR: Oh, dear.

ADDERALL ZOLOFT: But join us next time for Rat Out Your Neighbors.

PAXIL BUSPAR: Brought to you by America's DEA.

ADDERALL ZOLOFT: Who reminds you to just say no...

ADDERALL AND PAXIL: Just say no...

ADDERALL ZOLOFT: ...to all of mother nature's godsend medicines. Now, come on, Paxil. Let's take them out of here.

ADDERALL AND PAXIL: Because we're bad, we're bad, shamon, shamon!

Next essay: Richard Rudgley condemns 'drugs' with faint praise
Previous essay: Mental Illness and the Drug Apartheid of Julian Buchanan

More Essays Here


essays about
COMEDY AND THE DRUG WAR

Dragnet meets the Drug War
The Joy of Drug Testing
Drug War Copaganda
One of these things is not like the other
Comedian Adderall Zoloft Riffs on the Drug War
Plants Divine, All Plants Excelling
Testing Employee Urine for Fun and Profit
The Church of the Most Holy and Righteous Drug War
A Drug Warrior in our Midst
Public Service Announcements for the Post-Drug War Era
Se Llama Mushrooms
American City Homicide Awards 2021
Hey, You, Get Off Of My Creed!
Drug Warriors Anonymous
Partnership for a Death Free America
A Misguided Tour of Monticello
Drug War Jeopardy!

essays about
PUNISHMENT AND THE DRUG WAR

Connecticut Drug Warriors want to charge drug dealers with murder
Connecticut Drug Warriors want to charge drug dealers with murder
One of these things is not like the other

essays about
THE MENDACIOUS AND HARM-CAUSING DEA

A Goliath that even David is afraid of
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
Put the DEA on Trial
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

  • Andrew, Christopher "The Secret World: A History of Intelligence" 2019 Yale University Press
  • Aurelius, Marcus "Meditations" 2021 East India Publishing Company
  • Bandow, Doug "From Fighting The Drug War To Protecting The Right To Use Drugs"2018
  • Barrett, Damon "Children of the Drug War: Perspectives on the Impact of Drug Polices on Young People"2011 IDEBATE Press
  • Bilton, Anton "DMT Entity Encounters: Dialogues on the Spirit Molecule"2021 Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
    • Blum, Richard "Society and Drugs" 1970 Jossey-Bass
  • Boullosa , Carmen "A Narco History: How the United States and Mexico Jointly Created the 'Mexican Drug War'"2016 OR Books
  • Brereton, William "The Truth about Opium / Being a Refutation of the Fallacies of the Anti-Opium Society and a Defence of the Indo-China Opium Trade"2017 Anna Ruggieri
  • Burns, Eric "1920: The year that made the decade roar"2015 Pegasus Books
  • Carpenter, Ted Galen "The Fire Next Door: Mexico's Drug Violence and the Danger to America"2012 Cato Institute
    • Carroll, Lewis "Alice in Wonderland: The Original 1865 Edition With Complete Illustrations By Sir John Tenniel" 2021 Amazon
  • Chesterton, GK "Saint Thomas Acquinas"2014 BookBaby
    • Cohen, Jay S. "For Your Own Good: The Anti-Smoking Crusade and the Tyranny of Public Health" 2011 Tarcher/Putnam
    • De Quincey, Thomas "Confessions of an English Opium Eater" 1995 Dover
    • Ellsberg, Daniel "The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner " 2018 Bloomsbury Publishing
    • Fadiman, James "The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys " 2011 Park Street Press
  • Filan, Kenaz "The Power of the Poppy: Harnessing Nature's Most Dangerous Plant Ally"2011 Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
    • Fleming, Thomas "A Disease in the Public Mind: Why We Fought the Civil War" 2014 Da Capo Press
    • Friedman, Milton "Wall Street Journal" 1989 WSJ
    • Fukuyama, Francis "Liberalism and Its Discontents" 2022 Farrar, Straus and Giroux
  • Gianluca, Toro "Drugs of the Dreaming: Oneirogens"2007 Simon and Schuster
    • Gootenberg, Paul "Cocaine: Global Histories" 1999 Routledge
    • Gottleib, Anthony "The Dream of Enlightenment: the Rise of Modern Philosophy" 2016 Liveright Publishing Corporation
  • Griffiths, William "Psilocybin: A Trip into the World of Magic Mushrooms"2021 William Griffiths
  • Hofmann, Albert "The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants: Ethnopharmacology and Its Applications"2005 Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
    • Holland, Julie "Good Chemistry: The Science of Connection, from Soul to Psychedelics" 2020 HarperWave
    • Huxley, Aldous "The Doors of Perception / Heaven and Hell" 1970 Penguin Books
  • Irwin-Rogers, Keir "Illicit Drug Markets, Consumer Capitalism and the Rise of Social Media: A Toxic Trap for Young People"2019
  • James, William "The Varieties of Religious Experience"1902 Philosophical Library
    • Jenkins, Philip "Synthetic Panics: The Symbolic Politics of Designer Drugs" 1999 New York University Press
    • Johnson, Paul "The Birth of the Modern" 1991 Harper Collins
    • Leary, Timothy Ralph Metzner "The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead " 1964 University Books
    • 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
    • Maupassant, Guy de "Le Horla et autres contes fantastiques - Guy de Maupassant: Les classiques du fantastique " 2019
    • McKenna, Terence "Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution " 1992 Bantam
  • Miller, Richard Lawrence "Drug Warriors and Their Prey: From Police Power to Police State"1966 Bloomsbury Academic
    • Miller, Richard Louis "Psychedelic Medicine: The Healing Powers of LSD, MDMA, Psilocybin, and Ayahuasca Kindle " 2017 Park Street Press
  • Mortimer MD, W. Golden "Coca: Divine Plant of the Incas"2017 Ronin Publishing
  • Newcombe, Russell "Intoxiphobia: discrimination toward people who use drugs"2014 academia.edu
    • Noe, Alvin "Out of our Heads" 2010 HiII&Wang,
    • Paley, Dawn "Drug War Capitalism" 2014 AK Press
  • Partridge, Chiristopher "Alistair Crowley on Drugs"2021 uploaded by Misael Hernandez
    • Pinchbeck, Daniel "When Plants Dream" 2019 Watkins Publishing
    • Poe, Edgar Allan "The Essential Poe" 2020 Warbler Classics
    • Pollan, Michael "How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence " 2018 Penguin Books
    • Reynolds, David S. "Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville " 1988 Oxford University Press
    • Richards, William "Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences Hardcover" 2015 Columbia University Press
    • Rosenfeld, Harvey "Diary of a Dirty Little War: The Spanish-American War of 1898 " 2000 Praeger
  • Rudgley, Richard "The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Substances"2014 Macmillan Publishers
    • Russell, Kirk "Edmund Burke: A Genius Reconsidered" 1967 Arlington House
    • Schlosser, Erich "Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety" 2014 Penguin
    • Sewell, Kenneth Clint Richmond "Red Star Rogue: The Untold Story of a Soviet Submarine's Nuclear Strike Attempt on the U.S. " 2006 Pocket Star
    • Shirer, William "The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler" 2011 RosettaBooks
  • 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
    • Streatfield, Dominic "Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography" 2003 Picador USA
    • Swartzwelder, Scott "Buzzed: The Straight Facts About the Most Used and Abused Drugs from Alcohol to Ecstasy" 1998 W.W. Norton
    • 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
    • Watts, Alan "The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness" 1965 Vintage
  • 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
    • Zinn, Howard "A People's History of the United States: 1492 - present" 2009
    • 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.