Responding to Brainwashed Drug Warriors on YouTube
've been leaving comments on various Jefferson-related YouTube videos, reminding viewers of the inconvenient truth that Thomas Jefferson Foundation refuses to acknowledge the DEA raid on Monticello in 1987. One of my comments (on the video entitled Why Jefferson Didn't Free His Slaves") received a reply from a smart-ass prohibitionist. Since it pissed me off (just the tiniest little bit), I have reprinted the entire thread (so far) below, starting with my post and the harebrained rebuttal, and finally a series of white-hot replies that I rattled off back to back by way of countering everything that smart-aleck seems to stand for. I have retained the typos in my sequential rejoinders to better convey the harried state that I was in when I was in the act of composing them. Yes, it really pissed me off that folks like "avus-kw2f213" still think in the year 2023, 109 years after Congress first claimed the right to outlaw a plant, that prohibition is the answer. Prohibitionists today are like witnesses of a house fire who call for the arsonist to return and put out the flames.
Original Post
At least the Thomas Jefferson Foundation acknowledges slavery. They have been silent for 35 years now about the raid on Monticello in which Reagan's DEA confiscated Jefferson's poppy plants in violation of the natural law upon which the opium-loving Jefferson founded America. It was a betrayal of Thomas Jefferson's legacy. The signs around Monticello staking out "hallowed ground" need to be removed.
Smart-ass Reply
I agree the drug trade should definitely be legal both Americans and Brits fought and died for the freedom of selling drugs
Subsequent rejoinders
The drug trade? You mean the trade in Mother Nature's bounty?
Thomas Jefferson loved opium. The poppy is a plant. A PLANT! It is a violation of natural law to outlaw Mother Nature. see John Locke. Why do you think folks are dying every day now and there is no rule of law in Latin America. Because stealth Christian Scientists have taken over the world. God's bounty is GOOD. We need knowledge and safe use, not militarization. The DRUG WAR ELECTED TRUMP by throwing his opponents in jail. THey [the founding fathers] did not fight for drugs -- that's a Drug Warrior term. They [i.e., the Founding Fathers] fought for freedom -- of which none is more important than our right to Mother Nature. If the government can tell you which plants you can use, they can tell you anything, NATURE IS OURS BY NATURAL RIGHT. THAT'S WHAT AMERICA WAS FOUNDED ON. THAT'S WHAT MONTICELLO IGNORES IN BETRAYAL OF THOMAS JEFFERSON'S LEGACY.
yOU DRUG WARRI0RS CREATE UNSAFE SUPPLY, TEACH FEAR RATHER THAN SAFE USE, THROW A MILLION BLACKS IN JAIL, AND THEN blame all the problems that result from that on "drugs." It's the mother of all denial. And it has overthrown natural law in America, with the consent of those who should be speaking up for it. Monticello should stop stonewalling and come clean about the raid in which they stole plants. That's sci-fi stuff: Fahrenheit 451 the government confiscated books that expand the mind. In Fahrenheit 452 they confiscate PLANTS that expand the mind. William James himself said we MUST study such substances to understand ultimate reality. But the Drug War censors science and philosophical investigation by outlawing... wait for it, folks.... PLANTS! You have no right to do so. None.
Monticello should be DELISTED as a site of conscience until they come clean about the raid.
THe idea that "drugs" is a four-letter word is a modern invention spouted by racist politicians. In the past, they knew that all substances had positive uses. It depended on the dose, the reason for use, the circumstances. But Drug Warriors feed us the anti-scientific lie that psychoactive plants have no positive uses for anybody, anywhere, at any dose, ever.
Of course you have a knee-jerk aversion to drugs. You received a teddy bear in grade school for hating them. Your government and media has kept you from hearing anything about positive use. The ONDCP actually has a rule not to TALK about safe use for fear of encouraging use. Yet they blame kids dying on DRUGS. People want self-transcendence and not everybody wants the shabby drug called alcohol. Racist politicians blame everything on "drugs" so they can avoid spending time and money on real problems.
It never occurred to the founding fathers that government would so overreach itself as to pretend to dole out mother nature to reward and punish. They would have gasped at the idea of outlawing plants. It's not legal. It's not sensical. And all the woe that's followed from it falls squarely on the heads of prohibitionists. The daily deaths in southeast DC, the hundreds of thousands of deaths in Mexico over the last 12 years, the creation of armed gangs and cartels. And how did it start? Because of a sinophobic campaign to outlaw opium.
Acknowledge the coup against natural law. Stop hiding the truth. If the raid made so much sense, then acknowledge it and let everyone see how "sensical" it was for the government to CONFISCATE A PLANT!
Author's Follow-up: August 19, 2023
The smart-ass above implies that it's no big deal that the government has outlawed plants. Therefore it's no big deal that Monticello allowed the DEA to confiscate Jefferson's poppy plants. I can only observe by way of response that Monticello itself (i.e., the Thomas Jefferson Foundation) seems to consider it a big deal. They are obviously ashamed of the fact that they collaborated with the DEA in 1987 to allow them to stomp onto the garden-loving Jefferson's "hallowed ground" and steal his plants. Why else would they be covering up the fact that such a raid took place. Why don't they just say: "Sure, we let our government come in and steal some naughty plants: and what's more, we're proud of it!"
They obviously are ashamed and do not want to be "called out" for their betrayal of Jefferson's legacy of natural law, which tells us that mother nature's bounty belongs to individuals to use as they fit -- that government has no ownership whatsoever of the flora of this earth.
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).
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.
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
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
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
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
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.
've been leaving comments on various Jefferson-related YouTube videos, reminding viewers of the inconvenient truth that Thomas Jefferson Foundation refuses to acknowledge the DEA raid on Monticello in 1987. One of my comments (on the video entitled Why Jefferson Didn't Free His Slaves") received a reply from a smart-ass prohibitionist. Since it pissed me off (just the tiniest little bit), I have reprinted the entire thread (so far) below, starting with my post and the harebrained rebuttal, and finally a series of white-hot replies that I rattled off back to back by way of countering everything that smart-aleck seems to stand for. I have retained the typos in my sequential rejoinders to better convey the harried state that I was in when I was in the act of composing them. Yes, it really pissed me off that folks like "avus-kw2f213" still think in the year 2023, 109 years after Congress first claimed the right to outlaw a plant, that prohibition is the answer. Prohibitionists today are like witnesses of a house fire who call for the arsonist to return and put out the flames.
The smart-ass above implies that it's no big deal that the government has outlawed plants. Therefore it's no big deal that Monticello allowed the DEA to confiscate Jefferson's poppy plants. I can only observe by way of response that Monticello itself (i.e., the Thomas Jefferson Foundation) seems to consider it a big deal. They are obviously ashamed of the fact that they collaborated with the DEA in 1987 to allow them to stomp onto the garden-loving Jefferson's "hallowed ground" and steal his plants. Why else would they be covering up the fact that such a raid took place. Why don't they just say: "Sure, we let our government come in and steal some naughty plants: and what's more, we're proud of it!" 
