The Final Solution

Homepage of the Drug War Philosopher, Brian Quass

The Final Solution

When demagogues follow drug prohibition ideology to its logical conclusion

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher (Substack version)

July 30, 2026

I was hoping to unwind this morning by writing a mere “blog” entry, secure in the knowledge that I could thereby speculate at will about drug-related matters without feeling compelled to write an official “article” complete with footnotes and annotations. In so doing, I could get my mind off of the choplogic that I was subjected to yesterday while responding to the brainwashed notes of drug-hating Americans, like the hypocritical apologetics of a self-styled "regretful Libertarian" who claims that it is now our duty to lock people up for using the plant medicines of Mother Nature. "Yes, of course!" I thought to myself, "just as long as we don't lay a hand on your booze or meds, right?" I wondered if my fingers could even keep up when it came to typing the plethora of rebuttals that immediately suggested themselves to my indignant mind. "Says YOU," I think to myself, as my outraged fingers rattled away on my SteelSeries Apex 5 or whatever, speaking truth to dunderheads. But that was yesterday, on so-called "Note Wednesday." Today I can relax, take it easy, and maybe even highlight the funny side of that blackest of black comedies that we call the War on Drugs. Ah, yes. Today will be a relaxing day, a day to reward myself for a job well done!

Vain hope! Just as I started to snap my suspenders in confirmation of my upcoming bliss, I noticed an email in my inbox from the Drug Policy Alliance. “Hmm,” I said to myself, “what are they on about now? It’s no doubt another pitch in favor of harm prevention when they should, by rights, be championing benefit production, given both what we know about drugs and what we’re learning every day about the extraordinary potential of their strategic usage.” So thinking, I clicked on the proffered link, only to be confronted with the following highly depressing news flash:

Over the last year, the Trump administration has bombed 67 boats and killed 221 people in the name of stopping drugs from entering the U.S. ¹

Drug Policy Alliance

Well, that wiped the self-satisfied smile off of my face pronto, let me tell you — which is no surprise, of course, given that Trump’s actions were a slap in the face to everything that I had ever learned about justice, humanity and the rule of law. Relaxation was now out of the question. How could I relax and “take the long view” about drug prohibition when Drug War fanatics were now invoking the “final solution” in their attempt to rid America of the scourge of Mother Nature’s blessings? “Strange,” I thought. “I’ve always known that America was determined not to let me use godsends like cocaine for healing — but I always underestimated the extent to which they would go to keep me dead sober and as depressed as possible: they would kill those people who merely SEEMED to be interested in supplying me with Mother Nature’s uplifting bounty. Even the Conquistadores of Peru were not so meticulous in their attempts to outlaw native healing protocols.”

It will be argued that this practice of killing drug suspects overseas has been going on for decades, and that is certainly true, as Dawn Paley clearly demonstrates in Drug War Capitalism.² The difference is that the trial-free killing that was once hushed up and considered to be anything from “shady” to “shameful” has now become the open policy of the U.S. government.

And make no mistake, what our Murderer in Chief is doing overseas will eventually be done stateside unless Americans wake up. The first domestic victims will be drug dealers with the drug users following close behind. It’s the slippery slope that Nixon knowingly started us down by referring to his attempts to control human mentation as a “war,” a rhetorical ploy that is now supposed to have sanctioned real murder in the real world. It’s the “final solution,” brought about by Drug Warriors thanks to their attempts to control the human mind in what Whitehead would have called “willful ignoration” of the clear and obvious benefits of outlawed substances. It is the triumph of the kind of fearmongering that inspired the Hutu to kill hundreds of thousands of Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994, egged on by a broadcaster called RTLM, Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines.³ Trump will demand nothing less than a repeat performance, this time to be egged on by FOX News. In doing this, it’s important that we remember: he will not be creating some brand-new state policy out of whole cloth; he will simply be taking the inherently evil policy of drug prohibition to its logical conclusion. Such injustice was inherent in drug prohibition from day one. The proof is extant with the ongoing nullification of the Bill of Rights in the name of fighting drugs: drug prohibition is a caustic lye that destroys every democratic freedom that it comes in contact with.

AFTERWORD

Trump’s actions were predictable. This is what happens when we elect a lawless felon to the highest office in the land. But the most depressing thing about this story is the news coverage that it elicited from our supposedly liberal media. The Washington Post writes: “Deadly U.S. boat strikes have failed to curb cocaine supply, Pentagon and DEA officials say.” Meanwhile, NPR tells us that: “Boat strikes have not reduced drug smuggling into the U.S.” It might be said that the media is just trying to tell us here that the strikes have failed, even on their own terms, and yet there is more than a hint of an evil suggestion as well: namely, that the extrajudicial killings might have been acceptable to many if not most Americans, provided only that they had indeed cut down on the use of a plant that the Inca considered to be divine. One can only conclude that our leaders, even in the war against drug prohibition itself, simply know nothing about “drugs” except that it is their duty as Americans to hate them with all their heart and all their mind and all their soul. They know nothing of William James or of Alexander Shulgin or of Richard Schultes or of the xenophobic and racist roots of our laws against heroin, cocaine and hemp.

They have gladly taken up the pitchforks of the uninformed peasantry at the behest of fearmongers and are now marching toward the remaining outposts of propaganda-free thought in America, determined to convert the entire population to the drug-hating religion of Christian Science, will they or no. And one wonders how this ignorance will ever be corrected. Our media refuses to publish anything positive about drug use while the popular view is that it is wrong to even educate Americans about safe use. The prehistoric message to our young people is clear: do not understand drugs; just fear them.

As the character K remarks in chapter 1 of “The Trial” by Franz Kafka:

Calls for a slight attack of despair.

AFTERWORD 2

Here is an anecdote that helps illustrate my claim that a callous disregard for life and law were inherent in drug prohibition from the start. In the mid-seventies, my then-teenage brother sailed alone down the Intracoastal Waterway of the United States from southeastern Virginia to Georgia. During the trip, his boat was approached by a Coast Guard vessel and boarded, apparently because he fit the profile of a sea-going drug courier. Having found no drugs onboard, the Coast Guard departed, but not before revving their engines to max power, nearly capsizing my brother’s boat. This is just one of endless examples of how drug prohibition brings out the “inner Nazi” in law enforcement personnel of all kinds.

See related note and comments at: https://substack.com/@richardhenryparrish2/note/c-305089300?utm_source=activity_item

Note:

I received a comment stating: "Trials don't matter, trials only reinforce the laws written in favor of drug prohibition." That is a relevant concern -- however, in America, there is such a thing as annulment. A jury can refuse to convict because they believe that the law is unjust. I believe this is another reason why plea deals are popular -- because prosecutors fear the use of annulment.

Notes for essay entitled The Final Solution: When demagogues follow drug prohibition ideology to its logical conclusion:

1: “Drug Policy Alliance.” 2000. Drug Policy Alliance. https://drugpolicy.org/. (up)
2: ThriftBooks. 2026. “Drug War Capitalism.” ThriftBooks. 2026. https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/drug-war-capitalism/9217021/?resultid=e8667266-257a-41bf-83e3-78200e3527f3#edition=8539401&idiq=10283063. (up)
3: Shepley, Nick. 2025. “Hate on the Airwaves: The Role of RTLM Radio in Inciting a Genocide - Explaining History Podcast.” Explaining History Podcast. https://explaininghistory.org/2025/10/31/hate-on-the-airwaves-the-role-of-rtlm-radio-in-inciting-a-genocid (up)

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Drug warriors do not want to end "addiction": it's their golden goose. They use the threat of addiction to scare us into giving up our democratic freedoms, like that once supplied by the 4th amendment.

You can get a master's degree in healthcare today and not learn a thing about the power of hundreds of outlawed drugs to inspire and elate.

When Americans "obtain their majority" and wish to partake of drugs safely, they should be paired with older adults who have done just that. Instead, we introduce them to "drug abusers" in prerecorded morality plays to reinforce our biased notions that drug use is wrong.

Opium is a godsend, as folks like Galen, Avicenna and Paracelsus knew. The drug war has facilitated a nightmare by outlawing peaceable use at home and making safe use almost impossible.

Kids should be taught in grade school that prohibition is wrong.

Prohibition is wrong root and branch. It seeks to justify the colonial disdain for indigenous healing practices through fearmongering.

Drug prohibition began as a racist attempt to prevent so-called "miscegenation." The racist's fear was not that a white woman would use opium or marijuana or cocaine, but that she might actually fall in love with a Chinese, Hispanic or Black person respectively.

The FDA approves of shock therapy and the psychiatric pill mill, but they cannot see the benefits in MDMA, a drug that brought peace, love and understanding to the dance floor in 1990s Britain.

It's already risky to engage in free and honest speech about drugs online: Colorado politicians tried to make it absolutely illegal in February 2024. The DRUG WAR IS ALL ABOUT DESTROYING DEMOCRACY THRU IGNORANT AND INTOLERANT FEARMONGERING.

ECT is like euthanasia. Neither make sense in the age of prohibition.

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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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The Final Solution

When demagogues follow drug prohibition ideology to its logical conclusion

Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

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