a response to Maia Szalavitz' op-ed piece in the New York Times
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
February 6, 2024
The following is a letter to the editor in response to an op-ed piece by Maia Szalavitz entitled How Oregon Became a Linchpin for the Country's Drug Policies, published February 5, 2024, in the New York Times. This response, of course, will never be printed by the Times because even those who challenge the Drug War must do so from a Christian Science point of view -- a rule that Maia, alas, follows all-too-religiously in the following editorial, hence my disagreement with the same.
It's a sign of the befuddled times when an opinion piece like this becomes a big favorite of the Drug Policy Alliance1. The DPA's Brian Pacheco raves that Maia Szalavitz "gets it right!"2 But Maia's essay concedes so many points to the Drug Warrior that one despairs of achieving the wholesale change in drug policy that America truly needs: namely the re-legalization of mother nature and an emphasis on care and education instead of arrest and censorship.
What is Maia's conclusion about the current drug problems in Oregon?
Like any entry-level Drug Warrior, she blames the problem on drugs - but not just any drug, of course: she blames it on today's front-page killer drug called fentanyl, just as her predecessors blamed the "drug crises" of yore on PCP, STP, ice and crack cocaine3. She fails to note why fentanyl took center stage in the first place.
She fails to notice the irony in the fact that America outlawed opium in 1914 and thereby incentivized the sale of drugs like heroin and the modern opioids. To blame the Oregon situation on fentanyl is to ignore the real problem and to play instead a political game of wack-a-mole with drugs - a game that was set up by prohibitionists in order to disguise all social problems (like homelessness) as drug problems, a game which will continue until America finally wakes up to the real problems: namely, our refusal to admit that people want self-transcendence in life, that the world is full of psychoactive substances -- indeed, DMT is an endogenous substance in our very brains4 -- and that the rational approach to dealing with these two realities in a purportedly free country is to teach safe use and to ensure safe supply. The alternative is unbecoming a democratic country for it involves the ruthless suppression of a human behavioral pattern which has been with us since prehistoric times, one that many western individuals and non-western societies alike have claimed to reveal spiritual truths and even hints about the nature of reality, as American psychologist William James believed5.
Moreover, Maia writes from a Christian Science point of view, from the notion that drug use is, indeed, bad, but that we must deal with it more humanely. This would have come as news to the tribal peoples that the west has suppressed, because as ethnobiologist Richard Schultes tells us, all tribal peoples have used drugs to achieve social harmony and obtain what they believed to be spiritual truths6. Seen in this light, the attempts to demonize all psychoactive drugs is merely an attempt to destroy the world view of the people's whom we in the west have already destroyed physically, often by plying them with our drug of choice, liquor, while denying them the use of their own sacramental drugs. And this targeting of tribal drug use continues to this day as the DEA continues to hassle the UDV church with government red tape, despite the fact that the church won its right to use ayahuasca from a unanimous decision of the US Supreme Court. The way the church is required to store and account for the ayahuasca in its possession makes one think that the church is using uranium in its ceremonies rather than plants provided by Mother Nature7.
Finally, Maia claims that the way forward needs to be based on facts. That's all well and good, but what facts, Maia?
The fact that the Drug War has destroyed the rule of law in Latin America?8
The fact that the Drug War has turned inner cities into shooting galleries?9
The fact that the Drug War has censored science by outlawing the metaphysical researches of William James?10
The fact that the Drug War denies religious freedom to those of us who view Mother Nature as a goddess rather than as a drug kingpin?11
The fact that the Drug War removes Americans from the workforce, not for impairment but merely because they have certain demonized substances in their digestive system, some of which have inspired entire religions?12
The fact that the Drug War authorized the DEA to stomp onto Monticello in 1987 to confiscate... wait for it, folks... a plant called the poppy, a raid that surely made the ghost of Thomas Jefferson roll over in its grave.13
No, when Maia speaks of facts, she means the facts turned up by organizations like the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which she fails to realize is a political group, not a scientific one. Otherwise they would be called the National Institute on Drug Use. But their actual title shows they have a dogmatic commitment to the uniquely western idea that psychoactive substances can have no positive uses for anyone, anywhere, ever -- an anti-scientific postulate which keeps us from researching potential treatments for an endless array of mental maladies, from elderly angst to Alzheimer's and autism. Moreover, we live in a country that demonizes daily opiate use while insisting that Americans have a medical duty to "take their meds" every day of their life -- as one in four American women are now dependent on antidepressants for life, a "crisis" that we'll never hear about from NIDA, even though it represents the biggest mass pharmacological dystopia of all time, all based on the idea that science is God and nature is the devil14.
Maia quotes Dr. Alex Kral as saying "It's all about the fentanyl"15. But fentanyl is only what philosophers would call the efficient cause of drug problems. The real, final, cause is prohibition, since fentanyl is just the current boogieman and is destined to be replaced by many other "killer drugs" to come, until we realize that the problem is prohibition, not drugs. Hopefully Maia's so-called 'guest essay' in the Times will have a positive political effect in Oregon's vote on ratcheting back Measure 110, a vote which is to take place today. But by ignoring the real causes at work in the Drug War, her essay comes close to damning decriminalization with faint praise. Still, as King Lear said to Regan after being given the boot by Goneril: "Not being the worst stands in some rank of praise."
Author's Follow-up: February 6, 2024
It's interesting to note that Maia's specialty is neuroscience. The very fact that this is thought to qualify her to write on such subjects is part of the problem. The neuroscientist is no expert on "drug use" but rather on the materialist dissection of such use. Drugs are used for a vast variety of reasons by a vast variety of societies and individuals, and a neuroscientist is not the go-to person for such considerations. It's as if prohibition creates addiction by legal fiat and then materialist neuroscience comes in to tell us how addiction is, surprise, a real disease! Miraculous how prohibition suddenly disappears from this story as if by magic. There were opium habitues before 1914 -- after 1914, there were opium addicts who needed to be "treated" by modern science. Prohibition thus suborns science to treat drug use as necessarily pathological. There is a Christian Science agenda here that mainstream writers on this topic refuse to notice16.
Today's Washington Post reports that "opioid pills shipped" DROPPED 45% between 2011 and 2019..... while fatal overdoses ROSE TO RECORD LEVELS! Prohibition is PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE.
Prohibitionists having nothing to say about all other dangerous activities: nothing about hunting, free climbing, hang-gliding, sword swallowing, free diving, skateboarding, sky-diving, chug-a-lug competitions, chain-smoking. Their "logic" is incoherent.
Drugs like opium and psychedelics should come with the following warning: "Outlawing of this product may result in inner-city gunfire, civil wars overseas, and rigged elections in which drug warriors win office by throwing minorities in jail."
If we let "science" decide about drugs, i.e. base freedom on health concerns, then tea can be as easily outlawed as beer. The fact that horses are not illegal shows that prohibition is not about health. It's about the power to outlaw certain "ways of being in the world."
The formula is easy: pick a substance that folks are predisposed to hate anyway, then keep hounding the public with stories about tragedies somehow related to that substance. Show it ruining lives in movies and on TV. Don't lie. Just keep showing all the negatives.
Then folks like Sabet will 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.
I think there needs to be a law -- or at least an understanding -- that it's always wrong to demonize drugs in the abstract. That's anti-scientific. It begs so many questions and leaves suffering pain patients (and others) high and dry. No substance is bad in and of itself.
When we say so, we knowingly blind ourselves to all sorts of potential benefits to humankind. Morphine can provide a vivid appreciation of mother nature in properly disposed minds. That should be seen as a benefit. Instead, dogma tells us that we must hate morphine for any use.
I might as well say that no one can ever be taught to ride a horse safely. I would argue as follows: "Look at Christopher Reeves. He was a responsible and knowledgeable equestrian. But he couldn't handle horses. The fact is, NO ONE can handle horses!"
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.
I personally hate beets and I could make a health argument against their legality. Beets can kill for those allergic to them. Sure, it's a rare condition, but since when has that stopped a prohibitionist from screaming bloody murder?
I can think of no greater intrusion than to deny one autonomy over how they think and feel in life. It is sort of a meta-intrusion, the mother of all anti-democratic intrusions.
Enforced by the blatantly rights-crushing solicitation of urine from the king's subjects, as if to underscore the fact that your very digestive system is controlled by the state.
Until prohibition ends, rehab is all about enforcing a Christian Science attitude toward psychoactive medicines (with the occasional hypocritical exception of Big Pharma meds).
When folks die in horse-related accidents, we need to be asking: who sold the victim the horse? We've got to crack down on folks who peddle this junk -- and ban books like Black Beauty that glamorize horse use.
Democratic societies need to outlaw prohibition for many reasons, the first being the fact that prohibition removes millions of minorities from the voting rolls, thereby handing elections to fascists and insurrectionists.
Prohibition turned habituation into addiction by creating a wide variety of problems for users, including potential arrest, tainted or absent drug supply, and extreme stigmatization.
The goal of drug-law reform should be to outlaw prohibition. Anything short of that, and our basic rights will always be subject to veto by fearmongers. Outlawing prohibition would restore the Natural Law of Jefferson, which the DEA scorned in 1987 with its raid on Monticello.
Philip Jenkins reports that Rophynol had positive uses for treating mental disorders until the media called it the "date rape drug." We thus punished those who were benefitting from the drug, tho' the biggest drug culprit in date rape is alcohol. Oprah spread the fear virally.
This is the "Oprah fallacy," which has led to so much suffering. She told women they were fools if they accepted a drink from a man. That's crazy. If we are terrified by such a statistically improbable event, we should be absolutely horrified by horses and skateboards.
This hysterical reaction to rare negative events actually creates more rare negative events. This is why the DEA publicizes "drug problems," because by making them well known, they make the problems more prevalent and can thereby justify their huge budget.
The Partnership for a Death Free America is launching a campaign to celebrate the 50th year of Richard Nixon's War on Drugs. We need to give credit where credit's due for the mass arrest of minorities, the inner city gun violence and the civil wars that it's generated overseas.
In 1886, coca enthusiast JJ Tschudi referred to prohibitionists as 'kickers.' He wrote: "If we were to listen to these kickers, most of us would die of hunger, for the reason that nearly everything we eat or drink has fallen under their ban."
Drug Warriors never take responsibility for incentivizing poor kids throughout the west to sell drugs. It's not just in NYC and LA, it's in modest-sized towns in France. Find public housing, you find drug dealing. It's the prohibition, damn it!
I don't believe in the materialist paradigm upon which SSRIs were created, according to which humans are interchangeable chemical robots amenable to the same treatment for human sadness. Let me use laughing gas and MDMA and coca and let the materialists use SSRIs.
What prohibitionists forget is that every popular but dangerous activity, from horseback riding to drug use, will have its victims. You cannot save everybody, and when you try to do so by law, you kill far more than you save, meanwhile destroying democracy in the process.
Prohibition is based on two huge lies: 1) that there are no benefits to drug use; and 2) that there are no downsides to prohibition.
The 1932 movie "Scarface" starts with on-screen text calling for a crackdown on armed gangs in America. There is no mention of the fact that a decade's worth of Prohibition had created those gangs in the first place.
The worst form of government is not communism, socialism or even unbridled capitalism. The worst form of government is a Christian Science Theocracy, in which the government controls how much you are allowed to think and feel in life.
The Shipiba have learned to heal human beings physically, psychologically and spiritually with what they call "onanyati," plant allies and guides, such as Bobinsana, which "envelops seekers in a cocoon of love." You know: what the DEA would call "junk."
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 Problem is Prohibition, not Fentanyl: a response to Maia Szalavitz' op-ed piece in the New York Times, published on February 6, 2024 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)
You have been reading an article entitled, The Problem is Prohibition, not Fentanyl: a response to Maia Szalavitz' op-ed piece in the New York Times, published on February 6, 2024 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)