MCEE: Live from the DEA Lounge, it's the man who put the "psycho" in "psychoactive."
[laughter]
Mr. Johnny O'Clonopan.
That's my name, use it only as directed.
[laughter]
[applause]
Thank you. Oh, you're too kind.
I will never understand how I got this gig at the DEA Lounge here in downtown Washington, D.C.
[laughter]
Apparently, the Human Relations staff failed to check my politics before signing me up.
The truth be told, I believe that the Drug War is...
1) Anti-patient.
[gasp]
2) Anti-scientific.
[gasp]
3) Anti-minority.
[gasp]
4) A violation of the natural law upon which this country was founded.
[gasp]
5) A way for conservatives to steal elections by locking up thousands of their political opponents.
[gasp]
6) A make-work program for law enforcement that is their golden goose thanks to the highly lucrative forfeiture of so-called drug property.
[gasp]
7) A protection racket designed to shield Big Pharma and Big Liquor from competition.
[gasp]
And an excuse to invade other countries, often with the goal of burning plants that have been used responsibly for millennia by the locals but which now pose an unacceptable competition to the American liquor industry.
Well, aren't you guys going to gasp?
[gasp]
That's more like it.
[drum]
[laughter]
No, seriously. How many of you saw Leslie Bibb, Nicolas Cage, and Laurence Fishburne in "Running with the Devil"?
[applause]
Well, that's depressing. I didn't realize it was that popular.
WOMAN: Oh, yes.
So, let me get this straight: Leslie Bibb is the DEA Chief and she gets to torture and murder mere suspects because they were dealing in....
[drum]
...oh, how horrible...
PLANTS???
[laughter]
Thomas Jefferson is not simply rolling in his grave, he is doing handsprings and cartwheels.
[laughter]
I mean, did somebody say "Whirling Dervish"?
CROWD: Whirling Dervish!
I thought so. But then the DEA never cared much for Thomas Jefferson anyway. Thirty-five years ago, they stomped onto Monticello in their jackboots and stole the man's poppy plants.
[boo]
I know, right? Let me tell you something, folks. U.S. elections aren't being swayed by the Russians, they're being stolen by American movie producers, like the ones responsible for this little 90-minute bit of Drug War propaganda.
MAN: That's right.
[applause]
I'd better get out of here. I hear they're having a celebration for former DEA head John C. Lawn. You remember Mr Lawn. He was the guy who tried to poison American pot smokers back in the 1970s by lacing marijuana plants with paraquat, a weed killer that has subsequently been shown to cause Parkinson's Disease.
[boo]
What can I say? Your tax dollars at work during America's Drug War.
WOMAN: Disgusting
You took the hash right out of my bong, lady.
[drum]
[laughter]
Here's an idea. Since he likes that stuff so much, why don't we all chip in together and get him a birthday cake laced with the weed killer of his choice?
[siren wails]
Hey, I was just kidding. I would never try to poison someone with paraquat, unlike certain former DEA chiefs that I know.
[drum]
[laughter]
MAN: For sheezy my neezy.
It's scary, though, because 35 years later, Master Poisoner John C. Lawn remains a hero in the eyes of the DEA, and if that doesn't tell you how corrupt this agency is, then nothing will.
WOMAN: Word.
[applause]
My name is Johnny O'Clonopan, and my comedy is every bit as addictive as my Big Pharma namesake, baby. I'll be here until Friday, or until the DEA finally figures out that I hate their friggin' guts.
[applause]
[laughter]
EMCEE: Let's put some hands together, please, gang, for Johnny O'Clonopan.
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
Sana Collective Group committed to making psychedelic therapy available to all regardless of income.
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. (For proof of that latter charge, check out how the US and UK have criminalized the substances that William James himself told us to study in order to understand reality.) It outlaws substances that have inspired entire religions (like the Vedic), Nazifies the English language (referring to folks who emulate drug-loving Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin as "scumbags") and militarizes police forces nationwide (resulting in gestapo SWAT teams breaking into houses of peaceable Americans and shouting "GO GO GO!").
(Speaking of Nazification, L.A. Police Chief Daryl Gates thought that drug users should be shot. What a softie! The real hardliners are the William Bennetts of the world who want drug users to be beheaded instead. That will teach them to use time-honored plant medicine of which politicians disapprove! Mary Baker Eddy must be ecstatic in her drug-free heaven, as she looks down and sees this modern inquisition on behalf of the drug-hating principles that she herself maintained. I bet she never dared hope that her religion would become the viciously enforced religion of America, let alone of the entire freakin' world!)
In short, the drug war 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.
PPS Drugs like opium and psychedelics should come with the following warning: "Outlawing of this product may result in inner-city gunfire, civil wars overseas, and rigged elections in which drug warriors win office by throwing minorities in jail."
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
Bache, Christopher "LSD and the Mind of the Universe: Diamonds from Heaven" 2019 Park Street Press
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
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
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
Whitaker, Robert "Mad in America"2002 Perseus Publishing
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.
MCEE: Live from the DEA Lounge, it's the man who put the "psycho" in "psychoactive."
