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The Drug War Board Game

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

August 23, 2020



I was trying to forget about America's Drug War last night by playing a simple board game with my sister's family. Finally, I could take my mind off of the modern world's unprecedented folly of turning psychoactive substances into scapegoats and boogiemen.


(abolishthedea.com)

Unfortunately, however, this respite was not to be, for the board game that we chose was Life, and my sister happened to own the politically correct version of that game that had been printed during the Reagan-and-Bush eras.

Our four-person game began uneventfully. We all went to college and got well-paying jobs, with the possible exception of myself, who ended up as a debt-riddled schoolmarm taking home a mere $50,000 per annum. But at least I was forgetting all about America's anti-scientific Drug War and the fact that it violated the natural law upon which Jefferson had founded this country (which, I bet the president in question was spinning in his grave when the DEA stomped onto Monticello 1 in jackboots in 1987 and stole his poppy plants).


















I was looking forward to an hour of sweet forgetfulness viz. America's Drug War superstitions, when my brother-in-law (a ridiculously well-paid travel agent) landed on one of those orange Life spaces that read: "Just say no to drugs."

Oh, boy, here we go...

"Just say no to drugs?" I thought to myself. "It may as well say: 'Just say no to the natural plant medicines of which politicians disapprove."

I came very close to making these observations public, but I finally decided to hold my tongue, lest I spawn a conversation that should tick me off still further.

But you can no doubt imagine what I was thinking:

"What next? A space that gives you a Life card for turning in your parents, should they happen to use substances of which politicians disapprove? Or a Life card that cuts your salary in half because you failed a drug test?"


And so I played the rest of the game while mentally multitasking: attending to board game business on the one hand (I came in a surprising second despite my lowly profession, amassing an improbable $1,650,000) while silently reflecting as follows:

Imagine playing this "Game of Life" in the middle of the Amazon jungle, surrounded by godsend plant meds that focus and expand the mind, and then landing on a space that says: "Just say no to all those plant medicines that surround you."

You'd be like: "What are the game-makers talking about? Just say no to drugs? Are they kidding me? Why don't THEY just say no to Drug War colonialism? Why don't they just say no to plowing up the rain forest and enslaving whole peoples in order to acquire their precious rubber? Why don't they just say no to scientism and materialism 2? Why don't they just say no to the financial blackmail whereby they force other countries to outlaw the godsend plant medicines of which Western politicians disapprove?"



So much for taking my mind off of America's devastatingly misguided Drug War last night. Still, the experience reminded me of how well Drug War propaganda of the 1980s (such as the highly mendacious "frying pan" ad) had succeeded in convincing Americans that there was this all-powerful evil called "drugs" that must be quashed at any cost, even if it means renouncing the freedoms that Jefferson had said were ours under the supposedly tyrant-proof protection of natural law

I hope someday the '80s board game with its "just say no" Life card will just be a quaint reminder of the unenlightened days when politicians demonized substances for racist reasons rather than encouraging safe use through education. Unfortunately, we do not seem to be headed in that direction, given our overcrowded prisons, the Drug War in Mexico, and the fact that our substance prohibition has empowered a self-proclaimed Drug War Hitler in the Philippines. Then there are the all-too-popular Drug War propaganda films (including "Crisis" and "Running with the Devil") in which the DEA gleefully violates the US Constitution, torturing and murdering so-called "drug suspects," often while the torturer and murderer are chain-smoking cigarettes, which contain a drug that is far more deadly than what their victim was selling.

Who knows? In 50 years or less, the game of Life might feature a Life card that says the following: "You have been caught selling plant medicines of which racist politicians disapprove. Remove your token from the board and return all your money to the bank!"

Author's Follow-up: May 16, 2023


Speaking of games, I've created a version of the card game Pit called "Corner on Coca!" Unfortunately, I had a massive hard drive failure after so doing and now I have to reconstitute the source material from scratch. I guess what I'm saying here is, stay tuned to this space for the perfect Christmas gift for that incorrigible Drug Warrior in your life (God bless the rascal). "See, Daddy. Here's a game that will teach you why prohibition is wrong root and branch!" And Daddy's like: "This family has always promoted policies that kill the poor and minorities, why should we stop now?"
















Notes for essay entitled The Drug War Board Game:

1: The Dark Side of the Monticello Foundation DWP (up)
2: How materialists lend a veneer of science to the lies of the drug warriors DWP (up)




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Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




The drug war has created a whole film genre with the same tired plots: drug-dealing scumbags and their dupes being put in their place by the white Anglo-Saxon establishment, which has nothing but contempt for altered states.

Two weeks ago, a guy told me that most psychiatrists believe ECT is great. I thought he was joking! I've since come to realize that he was telling the truth: that is just how screwed up the healthcare system is today thanks to drug war ideology and purblind materialism.

The first step in harm reduction is to re-legalize mother nature's medicines. Then hundreds of millions of people will no longer suffer in silence for want of godsend medicines... for depression, for pain, for anxiety, for religious doubts... you name it.

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies." -- Groucho Marx

We drastically limit drug choices, we refuse to teach safe use, and then we discover there's a gene to explain why some people have trouble with drugs. Science loves to find simple solutions to complex problems.

I have yet to find one psychiatrist who acknowledges the demoralizing power of being turned into a patient for life. They never list that as a potential downside of antidepressant use.

The Drug War is a crime against humanity.

Americans outlaw drugs and then insist that those drugs did not have much to offer in any case. It's like I took away your car and then told you that car ownership was overrated.

Question: Why do doctors judge cocaine by its worst possible use? Answer: Follow the money.

Democratic societies need to outlaw prohibition for many reasons, the first being the fact that prohibition removes millions of minorities from the voting rolls, thereby handing elections to fascists and insurrectionists.


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






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Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.

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