The Right to LIVE FULLY is more important than the Right to DIE
open letter to Gino Kenny, People Before Profit
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
June 14, 2023
I sent the following message to Gino Kenny on his contact page at GinoKenny.com. Gino is leading a movement to promote 'assisted dying' in Ireland.
Hi, Gino. I agree that there are cases in which we should allow people to die peacefully. However, I do not think that euthanasia can be properly discussed without taking into account the War on Drugs and the fact that we have outlawed all the drugs that might make people WANT TO LIVE. American pharmacist Alexander Shulgin synthesized hundreds of drugs that can inspire and elate without causing addiction1. Coca and opium can inspire and elate as well -- and surely their use is far preferable to euthanasia2. Psychedelics can also make depressed people want to live. As for the right to die, westerners actually had that right before drug prohibition, since an immoderate dose of morphine would allow them to do just that. Today we have outlawed not only morphine, but hundreds of drugs which inspire and relax and expand the mind3.
If we promote euthanasia while ignoring the Drug War, we are like those who promote shock therapy for the depressed while denying the depressed the godsend medicines that could have cheered them up without damaging their brains and without turning them into zombies4. In short, there is a Drug War going on, and we need to recognize that fact. It has huge consequences for how we think about subjects like depression and euthanasia. As a chronic depressive myself, I believe we should have the right to die... but before the government gives me the right to die, I demand my right to live fully! I demand my right to mind and mood medicine and the plants and fungi that grow at my very feet!
Ending drug prohibition would "kill two birds with one stone": it would not simply end prohibition but it would give patients the right to the medicines with which they could allow themselves to die peacefully -- without begging leave of their government to do so.
Author's Follow-up: July 4, 2023
25,201 Mississippi, 25,202 Mississippi, 25,203 Mississippi... Oh, hi there, folks. Gino has not yet gotten back to me, but any second now! Now then, where was I? Oh, yes, 25,204 Mississippi, 25,205 Mississippi...
Euthanasia and Shock Therapy in the age of the Drug War
It is bizarre that we should have "the right to die" in a world that outlaws drugs. That means, in effect, that we have a right to die, but we do not have the right to use drugs that might make us want to live. Bad policy is indicated by absurd outcomes, and this is but one of many absurd outcomes that the policy of prohibition foists upon the world -- and yet which remain unaccountably invisible to almost everyone, including almost all proponents of the aforesaid euthanasia.
Check out the conversations that I have had so far with the movers and shakers in the drug-war game -- or rather that I have TRIED to have. Actually, most of these people have failed to respond to my calls to parlay, but that need not stop you from reading MY side of these would-be chats.
I don't know what's worse, being ignored entirely or being answered with a simple "Thank you" or "I'll think about it." One writes thousands of words to raise questions that no one else is discussing and they are received and dismissed with a "Thank you." So much for discussion, so much for give-and-take. It's just plain considered bad manners these days to talk honestly about drugs. Academia is living in a fantasy world in which drugs are ignored and/or demonized -- and they are in no hurry to face reality. And so I am considered a troublemaker. This is understandable, of course. One can support gay rights, feminism, and LGBTQ+ today without raising collegiate hackles, but should one dare to talk honestly about drugs, they are exiled from the public commons.
Somebody needs to keep pointing out the sad truth about today's censored academia and how this self-censorship is but one of the many unacknowledged consequences of the drug war ideology of substance demonization.
Before anyone receives shock therapy, they should have the option to start using opium daily instead and/or any other natural drug that makes them feel good and keeps them calm. Any natural drug is better than knowingly damaging the brain!!!
Saying "Fentanyl kills" is exactly like saying "Fire bad!"
We westerners have "just said no" to pain relief, mood elevation and religious insight.
The fact that some drugs can be addictive is no reason to outlaw drugs. It is a reason to teach safe use and to publicize all the ways that smart people have found to avoid unwanted pharmacological dependency -- and a reason to use drugs to fight drugs.
This is why I call the drug war 'fanatical Christian Science.' People would rather have grandpa die than to let him use laughing gas or coca or opium or MDMA, etc. etc.
My local community store here in the sticks sells Trump "dollar bills" at the checkout counter. I don't know what's worse: a president encouraging insurrection or an electorate that does not see that as a problem.
If there were no other problem with antidepressants, they would be wrong for the simple reason that they make a user dependent for life -- not as a bug (as in drugs like opium) but rather as a feature: that's how they "work," by being administered daily for a lifetime.
Drug prohibition is the biggest tyranny imaginable. It is the government control of pain relief. It is government telling us how and how much we are allowed to think and feel in this life.
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.
Prohibitionists have blood on their hands. People do not naturally die in the tens of thousands from opioid use, notwithstanding the lies of 19th-century missionaries in China. It takes bad drug policy to accomplish that.
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 Right to LIVE FULLY is more important than the Right to DIE: open letter to Gino Kenny, People Before Profit, published on June 14, 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)
You have been reading an article entitled, The Right to LIVE FULLY is more important than the Right to DIE: open letter to Gino Kenny, People Before Profit, published on June 14, 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)
