The Christian Presuppositions of the Drug War and Why They're Important
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
January 18, 2024
There are people who want to make men's lives more difficult for no other reason than afterwards to offer them their prescriptions for making life easier -- their Christianity, for example. -- Nietzsche1
I keep getting Tweets along the lines of: "Well, that's all well and good, but the Drug War is REALLY about A, B, or C..."
I'm told by one that it's all about militarization, by another that it's all about money, by still another that it's all about racism. If you ask me, it is all about materialism 2 as well (a connection that I appear to be the only one to have noticed so far, however, which has turned me into the Ignaz Semmelweis of the Drug War3).
Of course, they're all correct. The Drug War is "about" a lot of things. But the real question, philosophically speaking, is how a program that is dramatically failing even on its own supposed terms, that of saving lives, can be not only tolerated by Americans of all political stripes, but actually promoted by them. (The Washington Post recently reported that the shipment of opioid pills dropped 45% between 2011 and 2019 thanks to law enforcement crackdowns. During the same time, the deaths by overdose skyrocketed!4)
This stubborn illogical embrace of drug-war ideology cannot be explained by militarization, greed or racism. It has something to do with the very psyche of westerners, which, as Nietzsche warned us, has maintained the puritan notions of Christianity while discarding the religion5. It has something to do with our historical disdain for the tribal people that we have conquered and their belief in drug cures. It has something to do with our puritanical distrust of laughter and unfettered self-expression. It has something to do with America's ongoing need for sin, redemption, and the existence of a devil. It has something to do with America's concoction of a faux morality whereby we can resurrect a world where there is a clear good and bad: drug dealers bad, prohibitionists good. The sinner is the "user" who comes home to a 12-step group and recognizes a thinly disguised Christian god known as a "higher power." These 12-step groups, of course, teach the "addicts" that they are powerless6. (Of course, the reason they are powerless is because the drug law has made them so, just as a flu victim might be powerless to overcome the flu were we to outlaw all antibiotics.)
Otherwise the Drug War would be inexplicable. For it is not common sense to hate drugs. That is something one must learn. And even in order to learn that, you must be predisposed to that belief by the history of your people. Certainly such anti-drug attitudes never occurred to tribal peoples, all of whom used drugs for various psychosocial purposes, as ethnobotanist Richard Schultes reports7. The Drug War, in fact, can be seen as the west's final step in destroying these aboriginal peoples: we first destroyed them physically, and now we are bent on destroying their nature-friendly view of life, their metaphysic about what life is all about, and replacing their shamans with our materialist doctors, doctors who are so obsessed with looking down their microscopes that they cannot acknowledge that drugs like laughing gas 8 and MDMA 9 could help the depressed.
Those who ignore this background story cut the ground out from under the legalization movement (or rather the RE-legalization 10 movement). For the strongest argument that can (and should) be made against the Drug War is the fact that it is the unconstitutional enforcement of a religion: namely, the religion of Christian Science, which tells us that using drugs is morally wrong, that the moral state of mind is the "drug free" state of mind11.
With this argument, we can (and should) make a strong and undeniable case that the Drug War must end NOW, declaring that it is SELF-EVIDENTLY wrong to tell people how and how much they are allowed to think and feel in life, and that is exactly what we do when we outlaw psychoactive medicines. This is government overreach of unprecedented proportions, and it is supported by hypocrisy of equally unprecedented proportions, insofar as the most rabid Drug Warriors fiercely defend their right to guns, which kill 50,000 a year in America alone12.
They'll say, of course, that guns do not kill people - but then turn around and tell us that drugs do indeed kill people. It's such enormous hypocrisy that such gun worshipers should be photographed and placed in the Webster's Illustrated Dictionary under the term "hypocrite."
Author's Follow-up: January 18, 2024
As you philosopher types should already know, nothing that I've written above need be construed as Christianity bashing, or even Christian Science bashing. If you believe that drugs are bad, then more power to you. All I ask is that you keep that belief to yourself and do not insist that the rest of the world live by your theology. For I personally believe that life is all about becoming all you can be and that psychoactive medicine has been provided to human beings for a reason. Again, if you're a materialist, you will disagree. But again, all I ask is that you keep that belief to yourself and not insist that the rest of the world live by your faith in reductive materialism as the sole method whereby truth may be known.
We need to start thinking of drug-related deaths like we do about car accidents: They're terrible, and yet they should move us to make driving safer, not to outlaw driving. To think otherwise is to swallow the drug war lie that "drugs" can have no positive uses.
Drug warriors have taught us that honesty about drugs encourages drug use. Nonsense! That's just their way of suppressing free speech about drugs. Americans are not babies, they can handle the truth -- or if they cannot, they need education, not prohibition.
The outlawing of coca and opium is a crime against humanity.
My impression has been that the use of cocaine over a long time can bring about lasting improvement..." --Sigmund Freud, On Cocaine, 1884
I'm looking for a United Healthcare doctor now that I'm 66 years old. When I searched my zip code and typed "alternative medicine," I got one single solitary return... for a chiropractor, no less. Some choice. Guess everyone else wants me to "keep taking my meds."
There is an absurd safety standard for "drugs." The cost/benefit analysis of the FDA & co. never takes into account the costs of NOT prescribing nor the benefits of a productive life well lived. The "users" are not considered stakeholders.
The existence of a handful of bad outcomes of drug use does not justify substance prohibition... any more than the existence of drunkards justifies a call for liquor prohibition.
Harm Reduction is not enough. We need Benefit Production as well. The autistic should be able to use compassion-enhancing drugs; dementia patients should be able to use drugs that speed up and sharpen mental processes.
The best harm reduction strategy would be to re-legalize opium and cocaine. We would thereby end depression in America and free Americans from their abject reliance on the healthcare industry, meanwhile ending gang violence and restoring the rule of law in Latin America.
So he writes about the mindset of the deeply depressed, reifying the condition as if it were some great "type" inevitably to be encountered in humanity. No. It's the "type" to be found in a post-Christian society that has turned up its scientific nose at psychoactive medicine.
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