an open letter to The American Council on Science and Health
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
January 23, 2024
The American Council on Science and Health, ACSH, says it has been "promoting science and debunking junk since 1978." Here is a letter that I wrote to them after reading an article on their website by Josh Bloom, Director of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Science at the University of Virginia.
Dear Sir or Madam:
I would like to suggest to you that science is censored in the age of the Drug War and that we live in a kind of Dark Ages thanks to this fact. We are willfully forgoing all sorts of potential treatments for illnesses, mental and physical, because of our anti-scientific belief that psychoactive substances can be judged "good" or "bad" without regard for context. Meanwhile, the materialist paradigm helps researchers make a virtue out of prohibition by allowing them to ignore common sense in favor of what they see in a microscope. (Who needs drugs that "merely" make one feel good?) And so we see articles with naive headlines like the following in Forbes magazine by Dr. Robert Glatter asking: "Can laughing gas help those with treatment-resistant depression?"
What?! He has to ask? As a lifelong chronic depressive, I feel like shouting: "Let me use laughing gas while you continue to search for what will REALLY make me happy." And yet the US and UK are attempting to criminalize laughing gas even as we speak, the substance that inspired the philosophy of William James, creating the kinds of mental states which he told us it was our duty as philosophers to study!
If we were not in the Dark Ages scientifically, then every suicidal person would have a laughing gas kit at their side, just as we give an epi pen to the allergic. If we were not in the Dark Ages, then we would be actively searching for ways to help Alzheimer's patients with the many psychoactive substances that stimulate new thoughts and even new neurons. But we have a "prior commitment" to substance demonization, which is the above-mentioned idea that a psychoactive drug must be judged by misuse and abuse only, without regard to context -- and with no concern for its benefits, nor for the violence that will be created by the prohibition of that drug.
For more evidence that we are in a Dark Ages scientifically, consider the following:
We STILL shock the brains of the depressed rather than allowing them to use drugs that could cheer them up on the double and even give them psychological insights in the process -- like the hundreds of non-addictive godsends created by Alexander Shulgin.
We allow the depressed and elderly to use drugs to kill themselves (we call it euthanasia), but we will not let them use drugs that might make them want to live.
The Drug War has upset all our priorities and censored science. That's why I've gone without godsend meds for my depression for 65 years. The government is all about spreading the word that psychoactive medicines are evil. That's why we have a National Institute on Drug Abuse rather than a National Institute on Drug Use. That's why we judge psychoactive drugs by a safety standard that no one applies to anything else in the world.
Take Josh Bloom's article about licking hallucinogenic frogs. The article is tongue-in-cheek, and yet it represents the usual Drug War biases. Josh candidly tells us that the chances of being killed by such an activity are vanishingly rare, like those of being killed by a falling coconut. Yet in the same article, he says the licking of frogs is a "disturbing trend." What? Who's disturbed by it? Drug warriors, apparently -- the same Drug Warriors who will scream bloody murder if you even suggest that guns are dangerous.
If you want a writer on such topics, please let me know. Maybe I could write a sort of "dissenters" column... to balance out the scientific triumphalism that reckons without the Drug War.
My essays on this topic are many and growing. Two of them are listed below:
How Scientific Materialism Keeps Godsend Medicines from the Depressed
https://www.abolishthedea.com/how_scientific_materialism_keeps_godsend_medicines_from_the_depressed.php
Stigmatize This: More Drug War Agitprop from The Atlantic
https://www.abolishthedea.com/stigmatize_this.php
Opium is a godsend, as folks like Galen, Avicenna and Paracelsus knew. The drug war has facilitated a nightmare by outlawing peaceable use at home and making safe use almost impossible.
We have to deny the FDA the right to judge psychoactive medicines in the first place. Their materialist outlook obliges them to ignore all obvious benefits. When they nix drugs like MDMA, they nix compassion and love.
Like when Laura Sanders tells us in Science News that depression is an intractable problem, she should rather tell us: "Depression is an intractable problem... that is, in a world wherein we refuse to consider the benefits of 'drugs,' let alone to fight for their beneficial use."
Everyone's biggest concern is the economy? Is nobody concerned that Trump has promised to pardon insurrectionists and get revenge on critics? Is no one concerned that Trump taught Americans to doubt democracy by questioning our election fairness before one single vote was cast?
"Arrest made in Matthew Perry death." Oh, yeah? Did they arrest the drug warriors who prioritized propaganda over education?
Musk vies with his fellow materialists in his attempt to diss humans as insignificant. But we are not insignificant. The very term "insignificant" is a human creation. Consciousness rules. Indeed, consciousness makes the rules. Without us, there would only be inchoate particles.
When folks die in horse-related accidents, we need to be asking: who sold the victim the horse? We've got to crack down on folks who peddle this junk -- and ban books like Black Beauty that glamorize horse use.
Let's pass a constitutional amendment to remove Kansas from the Union, and any other state where the racist politicians leverage the drug war to crack down on minorities.
It is consciousness which, via perception, shapes the universe into palpable forms. Otherwise it's just a chaos of particles. The very fact that you can refer to "the sun" shows that your senses have parsed the raw data into a specific meaning. "We" make this universe.
"Can I use poppies, coca, laughing gas, MDMA?" "NO," says the materialist, "We must be SCIENTIFIC! We must fry your brain and give you a lobotomy and make you a patient for life with the psychiatric pill mill! That's true SCIENCE!"
Listen to the Drug War Philosopher as he tells you how you can support his work to end the hateful drug war -- and, ideally, put the DEA on trial for willfully lying about godsend medicines! (How? By advertising on this page right c'here!)
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, Science is not free in the age of the drug war: an open letter to The American Council on Science and Health, published on January 23, 2024 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
You have been reading an article entitled, Science is not free in the age of the drug war: an open letter to The American Council on Science and Health, published on January 23, 2024 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)