The Medicalization of Life is the natural result of drug prohibition in a scientistic society
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
March 10, 2026
I continue to be the only pundit to draw the obvious connections between drug prohibition and social problems. Most recently I pointed out how assisted suicide for the depressed cannot be discussed meaningfully without discussing the drug prohibition which renders it necessary in the first place (at least in the minds of the depressed)1. We outlaw all the drugs that could cheer a person up, and then we give them the right to kill themselves if they become too depressed. Go figure! But while I wait for any of the pundits in the debate to recognize my existence, I have discovered a new obvious connection between drug prohibition and social problems, to wit: the medicalization of life, first unveiled by mavericks like Ivan Illich2 and Thomas Szasz3, is powered by drug prohibition -- indeed, it could not exist without drug prohibition.
Most people would get on with their lives with the strategic use of godsend medicines and not listen to sermons about brain chemistry and their need to put their life in the hands of doctors. No one would see a reason to become a ward of the healthcare state by swallowing pills that are far harder to kick than heroin 4. Absent drug prohibition, no one would need to turn themselves into a childlike ward of the healthcare state.
Notes:
1: No one would need assisted suicide if we ended drug prohibition: what Claire Brosseau's case tells us about the warped mindset of the west when it comes to drugs DWP (up)
2: “Medical Nemesis : The Expropriation of Health : Illich, Ivan, 1926- : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” 2026. Internet Archive. 2026. https://archive.org/details/medicalnemesisex00illirich. (up)
3: “Medicalization of Everyday Life, the – Syracuse University Press.” 2026. Syr.edu. 2026. https://press.syr.edu/supressbooks/953/medicalization-of-everyday-life/. (up)
4: Heroin versus Antidepressants DWP (up)
read more essays here
Ten Tweets
against the hateful war on US
Two of the biggest promoters of the psychedelic renaissance shuffle their feet when you ask them about substance prohibition. Michael Pollan and Rick Strassman just don't get it: prohibition kills.
Heroin versus Antidepressants https://abolishthedea.com/heroin_versus_antidepressants.php
Problem 2,643 of the war on drugs:
It puts the government in charge of deciding what counts as a true religion.
Outlawing substances like laughing gas and MDMA makes no more sense than outlawing fire.
Outlawing opium was the ultimate government power grab. It put the government in charge of pain relief.
If opium and cocaine were re-legalized, hospital buildings would no longer be the secular cathedrals of our time. Some of that wealth would actually go to healthy people.
Imagine someone starting their book about antibiotics by saying that he's not trying to suggest that we actually use them. We should not have to apologize for being honest about drugs. If prohibitionists think that honesty is wrong, that's their problem.
Prohibition never ended. Busybody Americans just gave alcohol a big Mulligan for killing 178,000 a year in America alone and then began fighting to outlaw everything else.
Classic prohibitionist gaslighting, telling me that "drugs" is a neutral term. What planet are they living on?
Materialists are always trying to outdo each other in describing the insignificance of humankind. Crick at least said we were "a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules." Musk downsizes us further to one single microbe. He wins!
Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us
No cookies, no ads.
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.
Copyright 2026, Brian Ballard Quass
Contact: quass@quass.com
(up)