four Tweets to Vincent Rado after he unfollowed me
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
January 29, 2023
y Twitter engagement died almost completely after Vincent unfollowed me. That'll teach me to disagree with Vincent Rado! Anyway, to show that I'm more about truth than I am about popularity, let's take a critical look at Vincent's most recent Tweet about drugs, one which, I admit, has left me scratching my head.
VINCENT RADO'S TWEET:
In 10-20 years, the psychedelic boom thats (sic) occurring right now is gonna look an awful lot like the Rx opioid boom of the '90s and 2000s
I'm not sure what Vincent means by that. In 2016, a user was dying every 16 minutes from opioid overdoses brought about by Drug War prohibition which incentivized the sale of the most ready-to-hand and addictive medicine possible. Does Rado mean that psychedelics will be killing one user every 16 minutes in 2043? If so, psychedelics have a lot of catching up to do, considering that they have been implicated in only a handful of deaths since the beginning of time, and strictly speaking, they have "caused" no deaths at all.
Here are some additional responses that I posted to Rado's curiously alarmist Tweet.
1) Again, I don't understand the obsession with bashing psychedelic enthusiasm. You're still throwing the baby out with the bath water. Hopefully in 20 years, substance prohibition will look to us like liquor prohibition. That's what I'm hoping and fighting for.
2) You probably think it's okay to bash psychedelics because you have not gone an entire lifetime being deprived of godsend meds for your depression and being shunted off onto mind-numbing antidepressants instead.
3) My one psychedelic experience as a teen was the most enlightening experience of my life. It taught me that the antidepressants I was taking were tranquilizing me, not helping me to live large. Let's stop bashing psychedelics, even if the sales hype is irritating.
4) Still to this day, researchers are discouraged and otherwise barred from researching benefits of psychedelics and other "drugs." In 20 years, I hope that that government censorship of science will be at an end.
These are my views in spite of THE GREAT UNFOLLOWING! Agree with me at your own risk!
EPILOGuE:
Vincent subsequently said that I'm shilling for substances:
My response: Yes, I'm shilling for the hundreds of substances that America has outlawed over the years -- to the point that the only recourse for the depressed is shock therapy or antidepressants, which are lobotomy on the instalment plan.
That's how Governor Kotek is currently "dealing" with the homelessness problem in Oregon: by arresting her way out of it, in fealty to fearmongering drug warriors.
There is an absurd safety standard for "drugs." The cost/benefit analysis of the FDA & co. never takes into account the costs of NOT prescribing nor the benefits of a productive life well lived. The "users" are not considered stakeholders.
The Drug War is one big entrapment scheme for poor minorities. Prohibition creates an economy that hugely incentivizes drug dealing, and when the poor fall for the bait, the prohibitionists rush in to arrest them and remove them from the voting rolls.
Folks like Sabet accuse folks like myself of ignoring the "facts." No, it is Sabet who is ignoring the facts -- facts about dangerous horses and free climbing. He's also ignoring all the downsides of prohibition, whose laws lead to the election of tyrants.
The MindMed company (makers of LSD Lite) tell us that euphoria and visions are "adverse effects": that's not science, that's an arid materialist philosophy that does not believe in spiritual transcendence.
Prohibition is wrong root and branch. It seeks to justify the colonial disdain for indigenous healing practices through fearmongering.
People say shrooms should not be used by those with a history of "mental illness." But that's one of the greatest potential benefits of shrooms! (They cured Stamets' teenage stuttering.) Some folks place safety first, but if I did that, I'd die long before using mother nature.
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.
His answer to political opposition is: "Lock them up!" That's Nazi speak, not American democracy.
In an article about Mazatec mushroom use, the author says: "Mushrooms should not be considered a drug." He misses the point: NOTHING should be considered a drug: every substance has potential good uses.
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, The Great Unfollowing: four Tweets to Vincent Rado after he unfollowed me, published on January 29, 2023 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
y Twitter engagement died almost completely after Vincent unfollowed me. That'll teach me to disagree with Vincent Rado! Anyway, to show that I'm more about truth than I am about popularity, let's take a critical look at Vincent's most recent Tweet about drugs, one which, I admit, has left me scratching my head.
You have been reading an article entitled, The Great Unfollowing: four Tweets to Vincent Rado after he unfollowed me, published on January 29, 2023 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)