up! Stay right where you are. This site is implementing a surprise drug test on all site visitors.
Hey, zip your zippers back up, guys! My word! This is not THAT kind of drug test -- though I see that the Drug War has already conditioned you folks to submit meekly to the unConstitutional demands of America's Christian Science Sharia, according to which no one is allowed transcendence except through alcohol, with Mother Nature's plants being completely off-limits for that purpose.
Have a seat, and please use a number two pencil -- or a mouse. Whatever.
1) I only have a true right to the plants that government has decided are politically acceptable for personal use. True or false?
2) The Drug War is flawed because it can't work. True or false?
3) Opium is a drug from hell and should be eradicated at all cost. True or false?
4) Cocaine is evil because it is associated with murder, money laundering, and inner-city violence. True or false?
[five minutes later]
I see several of you are still furiously scribbling -- which is odd, first because this is not an essay test and second because you should probably be using your mouse, not your pencil.
Those of you who are finished should put your heads down on your desk top, just like in grade school.
Psych! Not really. I'm just seeing how far you guys will abase yourselves, given the fact that 99% of you would gladly give your urine to faceless corporations for them to verify that you have been a patriotic American and forsworn Mother Nature's medical bounty entirely.
Mind you, I can't blame you, since American Sharia states that you either submit to that body check or you starve, insofar as you are pushed out of the drug-testing work environment. Drug testing, indeed. Let's see them start testing to see if anyone drank alcohol in the last month. That would be REAL drug testing. Everything else is just Anheuser Busch's way of cornering the market on providing human transcendence.
Now, where was I? Oh, yes. STOP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Jimmy, will you collect the papers, please? And zip your fly up while you're at it. For Chrissakes!
OK, here are the answers:
1) I only have a true right to the plants that government has decided are politically acceptable for personal use. True or false?
The answer is false. Our access to (and use of) plants is guaranteed by natural law, by no less an authority than John Locke. Common law (and what law is more common than the drug law) cannot justifiably rescind our right to access and use Mother Nature's plant medicines.
2) The Drug War is flawed because it can't work. True or false?
False! The Drug War is a violation of natural law. It is the institution of Christian Science sharia in the States and Drug War colonialism abroad. It doesn't matter whether it could "work" -- the point is that it should not and must not work. The miracle powers of mother nature's medicines are not something government has a right to dole out or withhold based on political considerations. When they try to do so, they create a violent black market and run roughshod over the rights of ancient civilizations and cultures, forcing them to turn to alcohol rather than the moderate time-honored use of opium and the coca plant. That colonialism must not succeed. The Drug War is flawed, root and branch.
3) Opium is a drug from hell and should be eradicated at all cost. True or false?
False. {^Opium has been used in moderation by cultures for millennia. When the upstart US travels abroad to eradicate the opium poppy, they are simply forcing other countries to accept alcohol as the drug of choice.}{ Likewise, when the DEA stomps onto Monticello in jackboots and steals Thomas Jefferson's poppy plants, they are simply insisting on the supremacy of alcohol as the one and only allowable drug of transcendence in the United States -- a shabby vomit-inducing substance when compared to the moderate use of the substances which we have decided to hate as a matter of political policy.
4) Cocaine is evil because it is associated with murder, money laundering, and inner-city violence. True or false?
False. Yes, cocaine is associated with murder, money laundering and inner-city violence, but why this connection? Answer: Because of the Drug War, which creates a violent black market, as do any laws that forbid the use of a popular and prevalent substance. Was the coca plant the plant from hell when it helped Sigmund Freud attain self-fulfillment in life through incessant work? Is it a plant from hell when used ritually in South America? No, coca is from hell only in the minds of the Drug Warrior who thinks that any drug comes from hell if it dares to compete with alcohol when it comes to providing human beings with relaxation and self-transcendence.
Score Your Results
1 wrong: You are bamboozled by the Drug War. Your punishment? Read Ceremonial Chemistry by Thomas Szasz.. It should clear your head of the remaining illogical cobwebs spun there by the hyperactive spider of Drug War propaganda.
3 wrong: The bad news is, you have been totally bamboozled by Drug War propaganda. The good news is, I've got some swamp land in New Jersey for you that I can pass on at a bargain price! Meanwhile, for your punishment, buy and read at least THREE books from the Anti-DEA bookstore here at abolishthedea.com.
4 wrong: Your name wouldn't happen to be Jesse Jackson, Sr., would it? No? How about Donald Trump? Because it's hard to know who is more screwed up by Drug War prejudice these days, the left or the right. Your punishment... Oh, never mind, you're hopeless, I'm afraid. Unless you really WANT to change, in which case I plead with you to buy and read at least FOUR (count 'em, FOUR) books from the Anti-DEA bookstore here at abolishthedea.com.
By the way, if you got them all right, congratulations! Please get in touch with me and tell me so, because I'd love to hear that I'm not the last man on earth that understands these things, now that the clear-eyed but shamefully ignored Thomas Szazs is no longer with us. If you don't think that Thomas Szazs' insights are shamefully ignored, just read pretty much any article in the mainstream (or, indeed, even fringe) media on the subject of the Drug War. Every single one of them that I've read is in the thrall of one or more of the kind of nonsensical drug-war assumptions highlighted above. It's not just that they don't agree with Szasz, it's that they never even bother to address his many cogent points, let alone refute them, so convinced are they of one or more of the tacit assumptions held dear by the good old-fashioned patriotic Drug Warrior of 21st-century America.
What Have We Learned
It's amazing how many of my students get question number two wrong, even though they consider themselves to be solid foes of the Drug War.
But the fact is that any time I hear or read someone say "The Drug War isn't working," I know that they, too, have been bamboozled by Drug War propaganda.
Why, I want to ask them, SHOULD the Drug War be allowed to work? That's the question.
The Drug War is an instance of the common law trumping the natural law, which should be constitutionally impossible in America. For what could be more patently obvious than that the products of Mother Nature are mine solely by dint of my having been born on planet Earth? Thus the Drug War must be opposed on first principles, without regard to its supposed efficacy in fighting a politically established whipping horse such as "drug abuse." Once we grant that government may legitimately allow or withhold access to the various plants and fungi of the world, we have already surrendered to the Drug Warrior ideology whereby government allows or forbids personal transcendence at will.
Why do so many otherwise sensible freedom advocates make this mistake? It's because they are under the thrall of another bit of Drug War propaganda according to which natural plant medicines (such as opium, coca, and psychedelics) can have no possible use except in supplying a hedonistic "high" for morally challenged individuals.
The obvious response to this complaint, were it true, should be so what? These are still plant substances and it is not in your power to prevent me from using them in a country that is founded on natural law. Yes, you can punish me if I endanger others, but in that case you must punish me for that endangerment, not for the pre-crime offense of using plants.
But, in fact, the Drug Warrior is missing a whole realm of drug use which has nothing to do with hedonism: that use in which a person enters a mind-expanded state in order to improve performance (as in the case of Sigmund Freud) or to become more creative (as in the case of Poe and Lovecraft) or to commune with deity (as in the case of Native Americans and soma-worshipping Indians) or simply to lead a happy life while making others happy (as in the case of Robin Williams or Benjamin Franklin). Besides, even when substance use presents all the outward signs of a hedonistic practice, it yet provides the user with a relaxing break from pressing mortal concerns, and this relaxation can have demonstrably therapeutic results (lower blood pressure, the happiness that naturally arises in anticipation of achieving such occasional blissful states). It doesn't help matters that psychology itself typically ignores these benefits of illegal substances, insisting with the Drug Warrior that our bio-pharmacological whipping boys can have nothing but negative effects for the user.
Unfortunately, many (indeed most) enemies of the Drug War commit this same mistake, insofar as they often argue as follows: "Yes, illegal drug use is irresponsible and regrettable, but it's going to happen anyway, so let's allow it."
It's tepid arguments like this that allow the Drug Warrior to get on a moral high horse, travel abroad, and, in an act of breathtaking imperialism, unilaterally outlaw plant medicines that compete with alcohol, where substances like coca and opium have been used responsibly for millennia, often in religious and ceremonial ways. We simply say, "Drink our alcohol instead," and threaten to punish countries militarily and/or financially should they demur.
How do we live with ourselves after committing these colonialist outrages? We tell ourselves that the substances we have banned are not good for human beings, never questioning why we should be making that determination for the entire world (in the face of millennia of history that says otherwise), especially since our actions represent the de facto promotion of liquor as the one-and-only go-to drug for achieving release and transcendence - a shabby drug whose truly hedonistic use is routinely associated with vomiting, blackout and headaches - to be contrasted starkly with the personal insight and self-awareness that the judicious use of many outlawed plants has been shown to foster.
Why don't even Drug War opponents get this? Because they're in thrall to the Drug War notion that the mere use of illegal substances constitutes, in and of itself, "drug abuse."
To those who think that they are somehow saving the world from addiction, please wake up. America is the most addicted country in the world, with well over 1 in 10 Americans a bounden slave to anti-depressants, some of which have a relapse rate identical to heroin, to say nothing of America's thousands of alcoholics. Which reminds us of the hypocrisy of the Drug Warrior, who sees alcoholism as a personal weakness or disease and considers psychiatric medicine to be scientific and thus beyond reproach. But if one has a problem with any other substance, then it is suddenly the fault of the substance, not the individual.
And so society portrays liquor use as perfectly fine if done responsibly, while ahistorically insisting that there is no such thing as responsible use of substances that our politicians have decided to ban.
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
Miller, Richard Louis "Psychedelic Medicine: The Healing Powers of LSD, MDMA, Psilocybin, and Ayahuasca Kindle " 2017 Park Street Press
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.
up! Stay right where you are. This site is implementing a surprise drug test on all site visitors.
. It should clear your head of the remaining illogical cobwebs spun there by the hyperactive spider of Drug War propaganda.
