Homepage of the Drug War Philosopher, Brian Quass
blog icon orange rss icon with stylized radio waves bird icon for twitter bird icon for twitter substack icon


back navigation arrow forward navigation arrow


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.

Author's follow-up for September 13, 2025


(abolishthedea.com)

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 3 would allow them to do just that. Today we have outlawed not only morphine 4 , but hundreds of drugs which inspire and relax and expand the mind5.


Cartoon titled Euthanasia Meets the Drug War. Doctor talks to patient: The bad news is we can't give you drugs for your depression. The good news is, we can kill you if your depression gets too bad.
Americans have been taught to superstitiously believe that drugs are bad. Drugs are not bad or good. They are inanimate objects. Their widespread misuse tells us something about society, not about drugs.




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 zombies6. 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.7



Author's Follow-up:

September 13, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up






This is unfortunately a topic that no one wants to discuss. The entire western world reckons without the Drug War. No one realizes that topics like suicide 8 and depression cannot be meaningfully discussed without acknowledging the fact that drug law has outlawed our sovereignty over our own body and healthcare. This is why drug prohibition survives today, nearly one hundred years after America's disastrous experiment with liquor prohibition: because no one holds drug prohibition responsible for its downsides, and above all the fact that it has denied us the right to take care of our own health as we see fit. Before opium prohibition, everyone had a tacit right to peaceful death. We needed no political movement to establish that right.

It's ironic: if Gino demands the right to a peaceful death without confronting drug prohibition, then he ultimately has to demand our right to use opium to kill ourselves while yet denying that we have a right to use opium 9 in order to make us want to live! The enemies of brain-damaging electroshock therapy make the same mistake. They too ignore the effects of drug prohibition. So they are forced to oppose that barbarous intervention while yet failing to support the re-legalization 10 of substances that could make that intervention unnecessary!

In short, all enemies of human disempowerment are hamstrung these days by their failure to recognize, let alone combat, the most fundamental human disempowerment of all, and that is drug prohibition, which denies us sovereignty over our own mental and emotional states.











Notes:

1: Alexander Shulgin: American Hero DWP (up)
2: Fadiman, James. Psychedelicexplorersguide.com. 2011. https://www.psychedelicexplorersguide.com/. (up)
3: Three takeaway lessons from the use of morphine by William Halsted, co-founder of Johns Hopkins Medical School DWP (up)
4: Three takeaway lessons from the use of morphine by William Halsted, co-founder of Johns Hopkins Medical School DWP (up)
5: In Praise of Augustus Bedloe DWP (up)
6: Science News Unveils Shock Therapy II DWP (up)
7: "Easeful death" is nothing to be scorned. We would not need to fight for the "right to die" if opium were re-legalized. This is another reason why prohibition is tyrannical madness: it puts the government in charge of deciding not only how we can live -- but how -- and even when -- we can die. It is amazing that this enormous power grab is not seen as such, even by most Libertarians. (up)
8: Why Americans Prefer Suicide to Drug Use DWP (up)
9: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)
10: “National Coalition for Drug Legalization.” n.d. National Coalition for Drug Legalization. https://www.nationalcoalitionfordruglegalization.org/. (up)




read more essays here





Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




Scientists are censored as to what they can study thanks to drug law. Instead of protesting that outrage, they lend a false scientific veneer to those laws via their materialist obsession with reductionism, which blinds them to the obvious godsend effects of outlawed substances.

America arrests people whose only crime is that they are trying to be all that they can be in life... in such a way that psychiatrists are not getting THEIR cut.

All uplifting drugs are potential antidepressants. Science denies that fact by claiming that drug efficacy must be proven quantitatively. And so they ignore anecdote, history and psychological common sense.

The government causes problems for those who are habituated to certain drugs. Then they claim that these problems are symptoms of an illness. Then folks like Gabriel Mate come forth to find the "hidden pain" in "addicts." It's one big morality play created by drug laws.

Americans think that fighting drugs is more important than freedom. We have already given up on the fourth amendment. Nor is the right to religion honored for those who believe in indigenous medicines. Pols are now trying to end free speech about drugs as well.

SWAT raids have increased by 15,000 percent from the late 1970s to today, resulting in 50,000 to 80,000 SWAT raids annually in the US alone. --War On Us

An Englishman's home is his castle. An American's home is a bouncy castle for the DEA.

Here's one problem that supporters of the psychiatric pill mill never address: the fact that Big Pharma antidepressants demoralize users by turning them into patients for life.

"Abuse" is a funny term because it implies that there's a right way to use "drugs," which is something that the drug warriors deny. To the contrary, they make the anti-scientific claim that "drugs" are not good for anybody for any reason at any dose.

I can think of no greater intrusion than to deny a person autonomy over how they think and feel in life. It is sort of a meta-intrusion, the mother of all anti-democratic intrusions.


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






back navigation arrow forward navigation arrow
Book Cover

Break the ice with a sledgehammer: place this book on your coffee table.

This book features 150 annotated images, designed to force brainwashed Americans to confront the fact that drug prohibition is wrong. Here is what author Richard Parrish II says of the book's compiler: "The drug prohibition philosopher provides first-hand, principled, persuasive, and insightful arguments against the current drug prohibition regime..."

Purchase Your Copy
Book Cover

Diary of a Drug Fiend

This is the only full-cast recording of Aleister Crowley's 1922 classic paeon to common sense. It is the first book -- and so far almost the only book -- to stake out a philosophy of drug use that is compatible with human freedom, one in which we learn to use drugs as wisely as possible for the benefit of humanity. This recording was produced by the Drug War Philosopher and your purchases help support his effort to push back against the tragically counterproductive policy of drug prohibition, in the name of human freedom and of humanity's right to heal.

Purchase Your Copy



No cookies, no ads paid for by amoral and immoral billionaires (or trillionaires).


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.

The Partnership for a Death Free America is a proud sponsor of The Drug War Philosopher website @ abolishthedea.com.


Copyright 2026, Brian Ballard Quass Contact: quass@quass.com

tombstone for American Democracy, 1776-2024, RIP (up)