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The Drug War as a Make-Work Program for Law Enforcement

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

April 5, 2020



I was just watching an old episode of "In the Heat of the Night," in which drug runners feature prominently, of course. It made me wonder, what would TV have been like over the last 40 years without the Drug War? Script writers would have had to get inventive and picture their bad guys performing actual crimes - rather than hunting them down for the pre-crime of possessing politically ostracized substances.

2025 Update

The absurdity of the situation is clear when Chief Gillespie is asked how the officers should confront a newly arrived suspect at a drug dealer's house.

"How do you want to deal with him?" asks Virgil.

"I wanna know what he's got in that backpack," says the Chief.

That says it all about law enforcement during the Drug War: they're not interested in how anyone actually behaves: let the individual be as peaceful as a lamb, that means nothing. The police want to see what they have in the backpack, so that the full force of Drug War sharia may be brought down upon them if they dare to possess plants of which the government disapproves.

If the police go out onto a peaceful street, their job is to MAKE trouble by poking into other's business, rather than leaving well enough alone and letting peaceful citizens go about their peaceful business. And we wonder why guns proliferate and bullets fly.

In a sane world, it would be none of the Chief's damn business what anybody had in a backpack. The question would be how is the suspect behaving? What a waste of resources is thus employed in ruining Americans' lives based on what plant medicines they have chosen to use.

But the Drug Warrior never gets it. Their anti-scientific and draconian laws create a black market that results in crack houses popping up thanks to the profit motive. Then they point to those very crack houses as the reason why the Drug War must continue!!!

It's circular reasoning thanks to which the Drug War can never end - unless uprooted root and branch by folks who point out that it's all a power grab and a violation of natural law to outlaw naturally occurring substances in the first place.

Think of the cost of the Drug War: in terms of deaths and ruined lives and all the powerful psychoactive therapies for which even research is blocked, the soldiers going without powerful medicines for PTSD, the elderly going without powerful medicines for depression, the young minorities wasting away in overcrowded prisons for possessing natural substances that politicians have outlawed. Then ask yourself: would there be anything near this kind of drug-related suffering in the world had America NOT chosen to begin criminalizing plant medicines in 1914?

Obviously not. There was no drug problem prior to 1914. Why? Because back then people were still judged on how they actually behaved every day of their life and not on what natural substances they may or may not have in their digestive system.

But the power-hungry politicians saw an opening in 1914 and they ran through it.

Time to rewind and re-answer the question of how America intends to deal with substances: Let's try education this time instead of law enforcement. And let's not moralize about substance use, let's present the statistical facts on every substance known to humankind, without hypocritically leaving out alcohol and prescription drugs and tobacco, but definitely including every non-addictive psychedelic substance, substances which are now thought to promote the growth of new neurons in the brain - neurons that Drug Warriors could certainly use, judging by the illogical and circular reasoning that they continue to employ to this very day, over 100 years after Francis Burton Harrison succeeded in overturning natural law and criminalizing the use of a mere plant.

PS Not satisfied with arresting the perps, the Sheriff Bill Gillespie in the TV story gleefully confiscates the bad guy's property, under the tyrannical legal fiction that real estate may be held responsible for drug law violations. Of course, the property owner in the TV show is not a nice guy, so it's easy for American viewers to overlook the fact that the legal system is having a tyrannical heyday while cracking down on the mere substances that humans choose to ingest. Yet this passes as entertainment in America: watching law enforcement run roughshod over natural law and common sense, all in the name of combating a drug problem that the law itself has created out of whole cloth.

And then conservatives wring their hands, wondering, "Why do so many people fear, hate, and mistrust the police?" The answer: because the police aren't the police anymore: they are the enforcement arm of the ultra-strict Christian Science Sharia, AKA the war on plants, which tyrant politicians disingenuously refer to as the Drug War.

PPS Even in episodes that are not centered around drug dealing, the show gratuitously portrays cocaine use in the most lurid light possible, something of which only bad guy "trailer trash" partake, whereas Sigmund Freud used the stimulant liberally -- not in order to beat his wife and shortchange his business partners, but rather to goad himself on to a prolific vocational output that led to his self-actualization in life and his worldwide fame (but you will never see Hollywood 1 portray cocaine 2 3 used in THAT fashion, since that runs counter to their role in cranking out Drug War propaganda to keep the war on plants going strong until the end of time).



Author's Follow-up: March 25, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up




I would be glad to respect the police -- but that's hard to do when they have been given the role of the Gestapo by politicians. The Drug War is obviously just a way to harass blacks -- although it has a lot of collateral downsides among whites. I loved my mother, but when she had a problem with prescribed oxy, she was compassionated and helped -- albeit she was not given any common-sense substances that could help her kick oxy without the gnashing of teeth. Meanwhile, racist pols in Washington passed laws to kick Black women out of their government housing were they found to be using meds like oxy. Yes, meds. No substance is a monster in and of itself. The idea that such evil drugs exist has forced millions to go without godsends all because a minority misuse -- and then only because we refuse to teach safe use, nor have we offered them less problematic and inherently less non-addictive alternatives, like the blatantly obvious godsend phenethylamines whose use has been described in Pihkal by chemist Alexander Shulgin -- with such user reports as:

"I acknowledged a rapture in the very act of breathing."

"Excellent feelings, tremendous opening of insight and understanding, a real awakening."

"Tremendous feeling of confidence in life and the life process. Complete sense of resolution."


There is no doubt that non-addictive bliss like this could have helped my mom get off her prescribed oxy without enormous trauma -- and yet our Drug Warriors wanted her to suffer instead. And so they promoted fear and irrationality about drugs. DEA leaders in particular should be put on trial for crimes against humanity4, for they are the ones who have lied with impunity for decades about godsend medicines.

Meanwhile, we need to relieve America's police force of Gestapo duties -- and then they will have my complete respect and honor. Of course, they will then have to learn to exist on a budget -- they will no longer be able to confiscate mansions and dormitories at will because they found a plant medicine of which racist politicians disapproved.

It's interesting that the only public buildings you find these days that are ornate and large are hospitals and police headquarters. Just re-visited my hometown in Seaford, Virginia, and saw a new police headquarters that far outstripped the modest local library in magnificence and was by far the largest public building in the county. We cannot educate folks or save them from overdoses in America -- but boy can we arrest 'em! What a disgrace!









Notes for essay entitled The Drug War as a Make-Work Program for Law Enforcement:

1: Blast-off for Planet Hypocrisy! DWP (up)
2: Sigmund Freud's real breakthrough was not psychoanalysis DWP (up)
3: “Freud on Cocaine : Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” 2023. Internet Archive. 2023. https://archive.org/details/freudoncocaine0000freu/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater. (up)
4: Drug Prohibition is a crime against humantiy DWP (up)




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Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




I'm grateful to the folks who are coming out of the woodwork at the last minute to deface their own properties with "Trump 2024" signs. Now I'll know who to thank should Trump get elected and sell us out to Putin.

Americans love to hate heroin. But there is no rational reason why folks should not use heroin daily in a world in which we consider it their medical duty to use antidepressants daily.

Was looking for natural sleeping aids online. Everyone ignores the fact that all the stuff that REALLY works has been outlawed! We live in a pretend world wherein the outlawed stuff no longer even exists in our minds! We are blind to our lost legacy regarding plant medicines!

John Halpern wrote a book about opium, subtitled "the ancient flower that poisoned our world." What nonsense! Bad laws and ignorance poison our world, NOT FLOWERS!

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.

I'm going to get on the grade-school circuit, telling kids to say no to horses. "You think you can handle horses, kids? That's what Christopher Reeves thought. The fact is, NOBODY can handle horses!!!"

Just think how many ayahuasca-like godsends that we are going without because we dogmatically refuse to even look for them, out of our materialist disdain for mixing drugs with drugs.

Americans HATE big government -- and yet they have no problem with government using drug prohibition to control their pain relief and how and how much they can think and feel in this life.

I, for one, am actually TRYING to recommend drugs like MDMA and psilocybin as substitutes for shock therapy. In fact, I would recommend almost ANY pick-me-up drug as an alternative to knowingly damaging the human brain. That's more than the hateful DEA can say.

Healthline posted an article in 2021 about the benefits of getting off of antidepressants. They did not even mention the biggest benefit: NO LONGER BEING AN ETERNAL PATIENT -- no longer being a child in the eyes of an all-knowing healthcare system.


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






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