Essay date: April 17, 2020

The Joy of Drug Testing




live from the DEA Lounge, American comedian Johnny O'Clonapan on the patriotic duty of urinating for America -- Drug Warriors get 5 dollars off all alcohol and tobacco. Drug-Free punters get big shiny star for renouncing Mother Nature's godsend meds!

They used to laugh at him, said he'd never be a stand-up comedian. Well, they're not laughing now. Give it up, please, gang, for Johnny O'Clonapan.

[applaud]

Oh, I'm sorry. Was that my cue?

[laughter]

That's far too subtle for me to pick up on.

[drum]

[laughter]

Thanks for coming out. I should warn you, however, that there will be a drug test at the end of my gig.

[gasp]

So pay attention.

[laughter]

Of course, I myself have already taken a drug test before coming on tonight.

WOMAN: Uh-huh.

^{This is the DEA Lounge, after all, where you're judged not by the color of your skin, but by the contents of your digestive system.}{

[drum]

[laughter]

I'm happy to say that I passed the drug test with flying colors.

[applaud]

Oh, thank you very much.

Oh, my government would be so proud of me.

CROWD: Awww!

The drug-testing lab didn't find so much as one single naturally occurring godsend in my system.

ANGELS: Praise God!

That's good because according to Christian Science Sharia, I am not allowed to work in America if I use plant medicine to improve my psychological condition.

Sounds like we have some Drug War heretics in the house.

MAN: Yeah.

Speaking of which, it's a good thing that Freud got his psychotherapeutic work out of the way before America's Drug War began. Otherwise, he'd be smoking his trademark cigars in the San Quentin prison yard.

[laughter]

Freud would be like:

FREUD: Yo, homie. You're in this joint because you had a bad relationship with your father. Wanna talk about it?

And the homeboy would be like:

HOMEBOY: Do you want me to bust your head, yo?

[laughter]

Listen to this here cokehead, talkin' about my father? That [bleep] is whack, yo.

And then there's Ben Franklin, who used to liberally avail himself of opium. Just think: If he had lived in the age of the Drug War, he would have been a mere unemployed scumbag. Benjamin Franklin would be panhandling on the street, talking about:

FRANKLIN: Hey, dude, I just invented a lightning rod.

And the guy on the street would be like:

GUY: And you know where you can PUT that lightning rod, you damn junkie.

[laughter]

Here's an idea for a Drug War: Let's criminalize tobacco and alcohol and throw everyone in jail who partakes of them. That's a Drug War that I could get behind because it would give the hypocritical Drug Warriors a taste of their own medicine.

[applaud]

We'll have drug tests, too, and anyone who has drank or smoked within the last three weeks won't be able to get so much as a job at Taco Bell.

[laughter]

I was about to say you've been a great audience, but I really won't know that until I've learned what you guys have got in your respective digestive systems.

[gasp]

So let's take a short break while you all provide urine samples to our lab technicians.

[boo]

What's the matter? Are you guys anti-American or something? ^{Drug testing is as American as... as... as invading other countries to burn plants that other cultures have been using responsibly for thousands of years.}{

[boo]

You do realize that this is the DEA Lounge, right? I'm sure that the powers that be are taking note of your anti-American reaction to my drug-testing proposal.

MAN: Uh-oh.

Uh-oh is right. Is there not one patriot in the house who is willing to take a patriotic piss for America?

[crickets chirping]

I'll take that as a no... as well as a sign that this lounge has a serious insect problem.

[drum]

[laughter]

I'm going to be generous, though. On behalf of the United States government, I'm going to allow you to continue seeking gainful employment in the United States despite your failure to take my drug test.

[applaud]

Aren't I magnanimous?

WOMAN: Ah, yes.

Just remember: if you ever happen to ingest a natural substance that promotes happiness or motivation and provides you with psychological insight, chances are you are in violation of American Sharia.

WOMAN: Ah!

So, spit that substance out at once.

[spits]

WOMAN 2: Disgusting!

And kindly report yourself to the nearest DEA office.

MAN, siren wailing: Clear the way, folks: drug scumbag coming through!

[tires squeal] [brake engages] [car door opens & closes] [feet walking on gravel] [knock on door] [door creaks open]

FEMALE AGENT: Welcome to the DEA! [agent cackling]

They will then handle all the pesky details of ruining your life by consigning you to the nearest massively overcrowded penitentiary.

[cell door clangs]

FEMALE AGENT: Sleep tight! [agent cackling]

[laughter]

You've been a great audience... as far as I can tell. You sure you're not gonna piss for me?

[boo]

OK, relax. There's no harm in asking. That's a shame, though, because I paid a pretty penny to have these lab technicians come along.

CROWD: Awww!

I guess they'll just have to go back to their labs to continue removing marijuana users from the American workforce.

[boo]

They must be real proud of themselves. NOT!

[laughter]

EMCEE: Let's hear it for Johnny O'Clonapan!

[applaud]

LINKSPISSED

Next essay: The Depressing Truth About SSRIs
Previous essay: The DEA: Poisoning Americans since 1973

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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. It outlaws substances that have inspired entire religions, Nazifies the English language and militarizes police forces nationwide.

It bans the substances that inspired William James' ideas about human consciousness and the nature of ultimate reality. In short, it 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.

Brian Quass
The Drug War Philosopher
abolishthedea.com

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.

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

  • Bandow, Doug "From Fighting The Drug War To Protecting The Right To Use Drugs"2018
  • Barrett, Damon "Children of the Drug War: Perspectives on the Impact of Drug Polices on Young People"2011 IDEBATE Press
  • Bilton, Anton "DMT Entity Encounters: Dialogues on the Spirit Molecule"2021 Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
  • Boullosa , Carmen "A Narco History: How the United States and Mexico Jointly Created the 'Mexican Drug War'"2016 OR Books
  • Brereton, William "The Truth about Opium / Being a Refutation of the Fallacies of the Anti-Opium Society and a Defence of the Indo-China Opium Trade"2017 Anna Ruggieri
  • Burns, Eric "1920: The year that made the decade roar"2015 Pegasus Books
  • Carpenter, Ted Galen "The Fire Next Door: Mexico's Drug Violence and the Danger to America"2012 Cato Institute
  • Chesterton, GK "Saint Thomas Acquinas"2014 BookBaby
  • Filan, Kenaz "The Power of the Poppy: Harnessing Nature's Most Dangerous Plant Ally"2011 Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
  • Griffiths, William "Psilocybin: A Trip into the World of Magic Mushrooms"2021 William Griffiths
  • Hofmann, Albert "The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants: Ethnopharmacology and Its Applications"2005 Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
  • Irwin-Rogers, Keir "Illicit Drug Markets, Consumer Capitalism and the Rise of Social Media: A Toxic Trap for Young People"2019
  • James, William "The Varieties of Religious Experience"1902 Philosophical Library
  • Mariani, Angelo "Coca and its Therapeutic Application, Third Edition"1896 Gutenberg.org
  • Mortimer MD, W. Golden "Coca: Divine Plant of the Incas"2017 Ronin Publishing
  • Partridge, Chiristopher "Alistair Crowley on Drugs"2021 uploaded by Misael Hernandez
  • Rudgley, Richard "The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Substances"2014 Macmillan Publishers
  • Shulgin, Alexander "PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story"1991 Transform Press
  • Shulgin, Alexander "The Nature of Drugs Vol. 1: History, Pharmacology, and Social Impact"2021 Transform Press
  • Smith, Wolfgang "Cosmos and Transcendence: Breaking Through the Barrier of Scientistic Belief"0
  • Smith, Wolfgang "Physics: A Science in Quest of an Ontology"2022
  • St John, Graham "Mystery School in Hyperspace: A Cultural History of DMT"2021
  • Szasz, Thomas "Interview With Thomas Szasz: by Randall C. Wyatt"0
  • Wedel, Janine "Unaccountable: How the Establishment Corrupted Our Finances, Freedom and Politics and Created an Outsider Class"2014 Pegasus Books
  • Weil, Andrew "From Chocolate to Morphine: Everything You Need to Know About Mind-Altering Drugs"2004 Open Road Integrated Media
  • 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.