Running with the torture loving DEA
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
November 7, 2019
Welcome back to the DEA Lounge!
I want to thank our public servants here for taking time out to join us. I know you've got a busy schedule, locking up liberals, so any time you can spare--
What did I say?
Hey, listen, I understand. By locking up liberals, you keep the Drug Warrior conservatives in power and thus maintain your crucial jobs of quashing dissent in America and limiting human consciousness.
No, seriously. I suppose the Drug War was bound to happen eventually on planet earth.
[gasp]
It had to happen at the precise moment in human history when capitalism and modern transportation coincided with a new awareness of the psychoactive power of plants.
[murmur]
PICTURE0020
We could either greet this alignment of forces rationally or not, and guess which choice we made?
[laughter]
Suddenly, Chicken Little politicians were screaming: "Oh, me gosh, we have to outlaw plants!"
Wrong.
AUDIO5
Earth to politicians: you should have outlawed the profit motive when it comes to those psychoactive plants, not the plants themselves.
[applaud]
I guess they had to scapegoat plants, though, since the alternative was to question the all-powerful god of capitalism 1 .
[laughter]
The result? They thereby created such a violent world that we had to invent a whole new movie genre to accommodate all the bullets and bodies: namely, the Drug War movie.
[laughter]
I hate to call such politicians morons, but if the dunce cap fits...
[drum]
[laughter]
"Gee, what happened? We outlawed plants and a bunch of violence ensued. Who would have thunk it?"
[laughter]
Answer: anyone with half a brain.
[drum]
[laughter]
Don't you love those Drug War movies 2 3 4 ? Those movies where the DEA "heroes" laugh at the US Constitution and willfully employ torture and murder to achieve their goal of outlawing Mother Nature? Ah, yes, good old American values: torture and murder.
[gasp]
Check out Running with the Devil, a DEA propaganda film starring Laurence Fishburne and Nicolas Cage.
[gasp]
Along with Leslie Bibb as the torture-loving DEA agent.
[gasp]
You know, if the Drug War is Christian, as many fundamentalists maintain, then I must have missed something in Sunday School.
[laughter]
I missed the part where Jesus told his followers to place suspects in bikini briefs, suspend them by a metal chain, and then threaten to drill holes in their abdomen with a power tool, as Leslie Bibb threatens to do to the so-called "Snitch" in Running with the Devil.
[gasp]
Oops, I forgot to mention: SPOILER ALERT!
[drum]
[laughter]
Speaking of spoilers, you ever notice that the Drug War spoils democracy!
[applaud]
I just looked up the movie, Running with the Devil, on so-called Common Sense Media.
[murmur]
Common Sense? More like Common Nonsense.
[laughter]
They pan the movie for its nudity and four-letter words...
[murmur]
...but they have absolutely NOTHING to say about the movie's glorification of governmental fascism5.
[laughter]
Common Sense Media is like: Watch out, parents. There are some very naughty words, indeed, in this movie! Land's sakes! Aside from that, though, it's just a good-natured romp extolling the wonders of fascism! So enjoy!
[laughter]
My name is Ballard Quass and I'll be here until they outlaw freedom of speech6, which won't be long considering that our government has already had the metaphysical chutzpah to outlaw mere plants!
Notes:
1: What the drug war tells us about American capitalism DWP (up)
2: Glenn Close but no cigar DWP (up)
3: Blast-off for Planet Hypocrisy! DWP (up)
4: Drug War Quotes in TV and Movies DWP (up)
5: Glorifying Beneficial Drug Use DWP (up)
6: Speak now or forever hold your peace about drug prohibition DWP (up)
read more essays here
Ten Tweets
against the hateful war on US
The UN of today is in an odd position regarding drugs: they want to praise indigenous societies while yet outlawing the drugs that helped create them.
Outlawing drugs is outlawing obvious therapies for Alzheimer's and autism patients, therapies based on common sense and not on the passion-free behaviorism of modern scientists.
If opium were legal, then most of the nostrums peddled by drug stores today would be irrelevant. (No wonder the drug war has staying power!)
Laughing gas is the substance that gave William James his philosophy of reality. He concluded from its use that what we perceive is just a fraction of reality writ large. Yet his alma mater (Harvard) does not even MENTION laughing gas in their bio of the man.
The drug war is being used as a wrecking ball to destroy democratic freedoms. It has destroyed the 4th amendment and freedom of religion and given the police the right to confiscate the property of peaceful and productive citizens.
After watching my mother suffer because of the drug war, I hate to hear people tell me that the problem is drugs. WRONG! That's a western colonialist viewpoint. God loved his creation (see Genesis). He did not make trash. We need to use entheogenic medicines wisely.
Folks like Sabet accuse folks like myself of ignoring the "facts." No, it is Sabet who is ignoring the facts -- facts about dangerous horses and free climbing. He's also ignoring all the downsides of prohibition, whose laws lead to the election of tyrants.
The goal of drug-law reform should be to outlaw prohibition. Anything short of that, and our basic rights will always be subject to veto by fearmongers. Outlawing prohibition would restore the Natural Law of Jefferson, which the DEA scorned in 1987 with its raid on Monticello.
We would never have even heard of Freud except for cocaine. How many geniuses is America stifling even as we speak thanks to the war on mind improving medicines?
Scientists are responsible for endless incarcerations in America. Why? Because they fail to denounce the DEA lie that psychoactive substances have no positive medical uses. This is so obviously wrong that only an academic in an Ivory Tower could believe it.
Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us
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Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.
Copyright 2026, Brian Ballard Quass
Contact: quass@quass.com
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