The Dark Side of the Monticello Foundation
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
April 27, 2022
In response to "The Dark Side of Thomas Jefferson," published October 2012 in Smithsonian Magazine.
What about the Dark Side of the Monticello Foundation (aka the Thomas Jefferson Foundation), which betrayed Thomas Jefferson's legacy of natural law in 1987 by inviting the DEA onto his estate to confiscate the founding father's poppy plants? Natural law didn't just give us life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It gave us what Locke called the right to 'the use of the land and all that lies therein.' If we're to judge Jefferson by modern standards, then the writers who ignore this act of betrayal on the part of Monticello should worry about how they'll be judged in the future, when Americans finally stop demonizing Mother Nature's plant medicines and start learning how to use them wisely for the benefit of humankind.
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Drug War censorship is supported by our "science" magazines, which pretend that outlawed drugs do not exist, and so write what amount to lies about the supposed intransigence of things like depression and anxiety.
Malcolm X sensed an important truth about drugs: the fact that it was always a self-interested category error for Americans to place medical doctors in charge of mind and mood medicine.
In the 2015 movie "No Escape," the only place that was safe from anti-American hysteria was an opium den. How ironic that the U.S. forced Iran to outlaw opium.
In his book "Salvia Divinorum: The Sage of the Seers," Ross Heaven explains how "salvinorin A" is the strongest hallucinogen in the world and could treat Alzheimer's, AIDS, and various addictions. But America would prefer to demonize and outlaw the drug.
We know that anticipation and mental focus and relaxation have positive benefits -- but if these traits ae facilitated by "drugs," then we pretend that these same benefits somehow are no longer "real." This is a metaphysical bias, not a logical deduction.
The Thomas Jefferson Foundation is a drug war collaborator. They helped the DEA confiscate Thomas Jefferson's poppy plants in 1987.
Many psychedelic fans are still drug warriors at heart. They just think that a nice big exception should be carved out for the drugs that they're suddenly finding useful.
In 1886, coca enthusiast JJ Tschudi referred to prohibitionists as 'kickers.' He wrote: "If we were to listen to these kickers, most of us would die of hunger, for the reason that nearly everything we eat or drink has fallen under their ban."
Scientists are so used to ignoring "drugs" that they don't even realize they're doing it. Yet almost all books about consciousness and depression (etc.) are nonsense these days because they ignore what drugs could tell us about those topics.
Prohibition is wrong root and branch. It seeks to justify the colonial disdain for indigenous healing practices through fearmongering.
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Copyright 2025, Brian Ballard Quass
Contact: quass@quass.com
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