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? WHY is it a disturbing trend if the dangers are so remote? 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.
Author's Follow-up: December 22, 2024
It's scarcely a year later yet I look back and laugh at my naivete. Did I really think that folks wanted someone to speak honestly about drugs? I am coming to believe that the penny is not going to drop for humankind for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years -- and sadly this may only happen after a global nuclear tragedy -- from which we may finally learn that drugs that facilitate trust and compassion are not the enemy -- indeed, they are a big part of the answer for an humanity whose innate fear of "the other" will have, by then, no doubt have destroyed the planet.
Open Letters
Check out the conversations that I have had so far with the movers and shakers in the drug-war game -- or rather that I have TRIED to have. Actually, most of these people have failed to respond to my calls to parlay, but that need not stop you from reading MY side of these would-be chats.
I don't know what's worse, being ignored entirely or being answered with a simple "Thank you" or "I'll think about it." One writes thousands of words to raise questions that no one else is discussing and they are received and dismissed with a "Thank you." So much for discussion, so much for give-and-take. It's just plain considered bad manners these days to talk honestly about drugs. Academia is living in a fantasy world in which drugs are ignored and/or demonized -- and they are in no hurry to face reality. And so I am considered a troublemaker. This is understandable, of course. One can support gay rights, feminism, and LGBTQ+ today without raising collegiate hackles, but should one dare to talk honestly about drugs, they are exiled from the public commons.
Somebody needs to keep pointing out the sad truth about today's censored academia and how this self-censorship is but one of the many unacknowledged consequences of the drug war ideology of substance demonization.
Many of my essays are about and/or directed to specific individuals, some well-known, others not so well known, and some flat-out nobodies like myself. Here is a growing list of names of people with links to my essays that in some way concern them.
It's amazing. Drug law is outlawing science -- and yet so few complain. Drug law tells us what mushrooms we can collect, for God's sake. Is that not straight-up insane? Or are Americans so used to being treated as children that they accept this corrupt status quo?
The press is having a field day with the Matthew Perry story. They love to have a nice occasion to demonize drugs. I wonder how many decades must pass before they realize that people are killed by ignorance and a corrupted drug supply, not by the drugs themselves.
Of course, prohibitionists will immediately remind me that we're all children when it comes to drugs, and can never -- but never -- use them wisely. That's like saying that we could never ride horses wisely. Or mountain climb. Or skateboard.
There are endless drugs that could help with depression. Any drug that inspires and elates is an antidepressant, partly by the effect itself and partly by the mood-elevation caused by anticipation of use (facts which are far too obvious for drug warriors to understand).
This is why we would rather have a depressed person commit suicide than to use "drugs" -- because drugs, after all, are not dealing with the "real" problem. The patient may SAY that drugs make them feel good, but we need microscopes to find out if they REALLY feel good.
I've been told by many that I should have seen "my doctor" before withdrawing from Effexor. But, A) My doctor got me hooked on the junk in the first place, and, B) That doctor completely ignores the OBVIOUS benefits of indigenous meds and focuses only on theoretical downsides.
The media called out Trump for fearmongering about immigrants, but the media engages in fearmongering when it comes to drugs. The latest TV plot line: "white teenage girl forced to use fentanyl!" America loves to feel morally superior about "drugs."
Materialist puritans do not want to create any drug that elates. So they go on a fool's errand to find reductionist cures for "depression itself," as if the vast array of human sadness could (or should) be treated with a one-size-fits-all readjustment of brain chemicals.
If we encourage folks to use antidepressants daily, there is nothing wrong with them using heroin daily. A founder of Johns Hopkins used morphine daily and he not only survived, but he thrived.
Don't the Oregon prohibitionists realize that all the thousands of deaths from opiates is so much blood on their hands?
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)
