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Science News magazine continues to pretend that there is no war on drugs

an open letter to freelance writer Cassandra Willyard, author of 'A next-gen pain drug shows promise, but chronic sufferers need more options'

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

September 5, 2024



With respect, Cassandra, your article1 about next-gen pain medicines ignores the 6,400-pound gorilla in the room: namely, the fact that the Drug War has outlawed almost any form of treating pain. Opium, for starters, is illegal, as are a host of other medicines that could treat pain by helping one ignore it or think about it in a new way (like psilocybin and huachuma cactus).

But like almost all Science News writers, you reckon without the Drug War2, pretending that you are writing from a natural baseline, when, in fact, drugs like opium have been considered panaceas throughout history, with the exception of the last century or so, when America began demonizing effective medicines for political reasons. Being prohibited from using Mother Nature is not something that is common sense -- unless maybe one is a drug-hating Christian Scientist. The fact that naturally occurring drugs like opium 3 are illegal should be part and parcel of any truly scientific piece about pain relief.

For as author Jim Hogshire wrote:

"The poppy's central and indispensable position in our civilization makes access to it important, and thus forbidding public access to the poppy is staggeringly cruel."4


To remain silent on this topic merely serves to normalize the anti-scientific Drug War, which falsely tells us that...

a substance that can be misused by one person at one dose must not be used by any person at any dose.

Chronic sufferers need more options, Cassandra? THEN WHY DON'T WE RE-LEGALIZE MOTHER NATURE!!!












Notes for essay entitled Science News magazine continues to pretend that there is no war on drugs: an open letter to freelance writer Cassandra Willyard, author of 'A next-gen pain drug shows promise, but chronic sufferers need more options':

1: A next-gen pain drug shows promise, but chronic sufferers need more options Willyard, Cassandra, Science News, 2024 (up)
2: Science News Continues to Ignore the Drug War DWP (up)
3: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)
4: Hogshire, Jim. 2009. Opium for the Masses. Feral House. (up)




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Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




We should start taking names. All politicians and government officials who work to keep godsends like psilocybin from the public should be held to account for crimes against humanity when the drug war finally ends.

People are talking about re-scheduling psilocybin, but they miss the point. We need to DE-schedule everything. It's anti-scientific to conclude in advance that any drug has no uses -- and it's a lie too, of course. End drug scheduling altogether! It's childish and wrong.

Had we really wanted to "help" users, we would have used the endless godsends of Mother Nature and related synthetics to provide spirit-lifting alternatives to problem use. But no one wanted to treat users as normal humans. They wanted to pathologize and moralize their use.

We need a Controlled Prohibitionists Act, to get psychiatric help for those who think that prohibition makes sense despite its appalling record of causing civil wars overseas and devastating inner cities.

Addiction was not a big thing until the drug war. It's now the boogie-man with which drug warriors scare us into giving up our freedoms. But getting obsessed on one single drug is natural in the age of choice-limiting prohibition.

"I can take this drug that inspires me and makes me compassionate and teaches me to love nature in its byzantine complexity, or I can take Prozac which makes me unable to cry at my parents' funeral. Hmm. Which shall it be?" Only a mad person in a mad world would choose SSRIs.

The 1932 movie "Scarface" starts with on-screen text calling for a crackdown on armed gangs in America. There is no mention of the fact that a decade's worth of Prohibition had created those gangs in the first place.

Our tolerance for freedom wanes in proportion as we consider "drugs" to be demonic. This is the dark side behind the new ostensibly comic genre about Cocaine Bears and such. It shows that Americans are superstitious about drugs in a way that Neanderthals would have understood.

DEA Stormtroopers should be held responsible for destroying American Democracy. Abolish the American Gestapo.

Endless drugs 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 materialists and drug warriors to understand -- let alone materialist drug warriors!).


Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us






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