bird icon for twitter bird icon for twitter


The Lopsided Focus on the Misuse and Abuse of Drugs

Some thoughts on the Sam Harris podcast interview with Roland Griffiths

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

December 1, 2022



Sam Harris Making Sense Podcast interview with Roland Griffiths

The current scientific system which Roland represents is always worrying about potential abuse. But they are NEVER worrying about the millions who go without godsend medicines thanks to our purblind focus on abuse. Thanks to that Chicken Little mindset, I have now gone my ENTIRE 64-year LIFE without godsend medicines that grow at my feet. And Roland tells me that it could be 4 to 6 more years before the FDA grudgingly lets me use MDMA in a lab setting! (Rick Doblin said five years ago that it would happen last year.) Meanwhile, Roland keeps talking about "drugs of abuse," as if to write off their usefulness entirely. But the drugs he mentions can be used non-addictively for GOOD REASONS. But we have such a purblind focus on "abuse," that we feel justified in keeping such substances from the millions who would use them safely. Moreover, millions have used opium and coca daily for entire long and full lifetimes. Our talk about addicts wreaks of a Christian Science aesthetic judgment.

Besides, if addiction and dependence are such horrible problems, why do these guys say nothing about the fact that 1 in 4 American women are dependent for life on Big Pharma meds? I myself have to take Effexor every day of my life, but nobody's worried on my account. And these addictions are the result of scientific hubris, which supposedly found a chemical imbalance to end human sorrow. Wrong. The meds cause the chemical imbalances that they purport to fix, and if they cure depression, my mind never got the memo.

Please, let's stop this lopsided focus on the needs of potential abusers. What about the needs of the depressed like myself who go without godsends -- even now Chicken Little scientists are finding reasons to keep me (and millions of other depressed) from using laughing gas. They want to save a few hundreds from their own idiocy by letting millions go without desperately needed medicines.
.
The legalization of all substances would let us treat addictions -- and everything else -- with any and every substance in the world using a shamanic like approach of empathy. Roland sees a few drugs becoming legal and wants to use them to fight addiction -- but that's small potatoes. We need to relegalize all psychoactive substances. Then addiction would all but disappear -- which it should, since in practice addiction is really a pejorative term for habituation. Before 1914, there were opium habitues in America; afterwards, they were "addicts."

The current viewpoint is insane: it's one that says we can shock a depressed person's brain but we cannot give them plant meds to cheer them up. We can euthanize the depressed with chemicals, but we cannot give them chemicals to cheer them up.

Also, the duo seems to think that psychedelic experiences happen in the brain only. Why then did my peyote trip show me imagery of MesoAmerican gods and goddesses? Consciousness appears to be all around us, not just in our brain. Is there no end to the astounding wonders that we will automatically attribute to the supposedly random process of mindless evolution?

Drug War Ghouls




The Drug War Ghouls get busy any time a well-known figure dies prematurely, especially when the figure in question is a rock star or actor. You can just hear them whispering childishly: "Aww! Were they on any drugs? Were they on any drugs?" The presumption behind such tittering is that drugs are evil and can only lead to death and destruction. Of course, those who hold this viewpoint always forget that the Drug War does everything it can to make such outcomes of drug use a self-fulfilling prophecy by discouraging education about safe use and by ensuring corrupt and uncertain drug supply with their eternal kneejerk prohibition. This is all completely inexcusable. The Drug Warriors cause death. They are the villains. They are the criminals. Take the so-called opiate crisis. Young people were not dying en masse from opioids when such drugs were legal in the United States. It took prohibition to bring that about.

  • Attention American Screenwriters: please stop spreading Drug War propaganda
  • Childish Drug Warriors
  • Dirty Minded Drug Warriors
  • Drug War Murderers
  • Fentanyl does not kill! Prohibition does!
  • How the Drug War Killed Amy Winehouse
  • How The Drug War Killed Andy Gibb
  • How the Drug War killed Leah Betts
  • Ignorance is the enemy, not Fentanyl
  • Matthew Perry and the Drug War Ghouls
  • The Lopsided Focus on the Misuse and Abuse of Drugs
  • The Problem is Prohibition, not Fentanyl
  • There are no such things as 'killer drugs'





    • Ten Tweets

    against the hateful war on US




    That's the problem with prohibition. It is not ultimately a health question but a question about priorities and sensibilities -- and those topics are open to lively debate and should not be the province of science, especially when natural law itself says mother nature is ours.

    What bothers me about AI is that everyone's so excited to see what computers can do, while no one's excited to see what the human mind can do, since we refuse to improve it with mind-enhancing drugs.

    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.

    If Americans cannot handle the truth about drugs, then there is something wrong with Americans, not with drugs.

    Materialist scientists are drug war collaborators. They are more than happy to have their fight against idealism rigged by drug law, which outlaws precisely those substances whose use serves to cast their materialism into question.

    Imagine if there were drugs for which dependency was a feature, not a bug. People would stop peddling that junk, right? Wrong. Just ask your psychiatrist.

    Prohibitionists are also responsible for the 100,000-plus killed in the US-inspired Mexican drug war

    Drug warriors are full of hate for "users." Many of them make it clear that they want users to die (like Gates and Bennett...). The drug war has weaponized humanity's worst instincts.

    "They have called thee Soma-lover: here is the pressed juice. Drink thereof for rapture." -Rig Veda (There would be no Hindu religion today had the drug war been in effect in the Punjab 3,500 years ago.)

    Classic prohibitionist gaslighting, telling me that "drugs" is a neutral term. What planet are they living on?


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






    Open Letter to Rick Doblin and Roland Griffiths
    Alexander Shulgin: American Hero


    Copyright 2025 abolishthedea.com, Brian Quass

    (up)