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 Unpeople of Southeast Washington, D.C.

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

July 28, 2022



Last week, I looked up info about buying edibles in Washington, D.C., and found a place that offered local delivery -- except, that is, for the residents of Southeastern Washington, who are asked to call in to arrange for a driver. This stipulation, of course, is due to the fact that Southeastern DC has been a battle zone for decades now thanks to the guns and violence which the Drug War brought to the region by creating armed gangs out of whole cloth. If our society considered all Americans to be equally valuable, then this story of American no-go zones (inner city areas with skyrocketing homicide rates) would be on the front burner of the media every single day of the week, in the same way that the ABC News show Nightline carried on for over a year reminding Americans on a daily basis how many days their 52 fellow nationals had been held hostage in Iran in the late '70s.

Just as we then saw headlines screaming "The Iran Hostage Crisis: Day 252," we should see headlines today screaming "Southeast Washington Homicide Crisis: Day 2,502." Why don't we?

Answer:

Because, as Chomsky points out, human beings become "unpeople" when their needs and problems are not included on the "to-do" list of moneyed America and the media outlets that work for them. And to highlight the DC homicides would be to highlight the huge failure of the Drug War, which is the policy which keeps Americans under the ideological thumb of the elite while pushing profits through the roof for the healthcare industry, which profits enormously from its monopoly on mood medicine (highly addictive mood medicine at that). Nor can we count on the local press to cover such minority deaths, since local papers these days are owned by national companies, especially Gannett (see Gannett and the Death of Local Newspapers) who impose their corporate agendas on their skeleton staff of local reporters.

?374?
|22|

Take the Milwaukee Journal which recently rather tersely covered the death of 15-year-old Dechale N. Hampton by gunfire in the dangerous-sounding 9000 block of North 95th Street. He was the 14th juvenile killed this year in Milwaukee and the 109th homicide so far this year. Instead of honoring his untimely death by launching an investigative series to show how the Drug War had armed inner cities to the teeth, the skeleton staff of Gannett reporters quickly moved on to covering the important stuff, like a Sporkies Competition at the Wisconsin State Fair -- stories that were about and for real people, as that term is defined today by the 1%.

As Ann Heather Thompson wrote in the Atlantic: "Without the War on Drugs, the level of gun violence 1 that plagues so many poor inner-city neighborhoods today simply would not exist." That's why these inner city deaths cannot be covered in detail, because the Drug War is the accepted policy of the "haves" who are therefore loath to run rabble-rousing articles that might conduce to that war's demise.


Author's Follow-up: August 21, 2022



Why are the daily deaths of blacks NOT reported across the country every day as the unacceptable tragedy that it is? Read or listen to the following to find out:

Herman, Edward S.. "Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media." Scribd.com. February 02, 2015. https://www.scribd.com/listen/345471878#.



August 22, 2022
Of course, there are other no-go zones around the globe since the drug-war is worldwide. Like the favela of Heliopolis in Brazil. Brazil should spend its money on improved housing instead of fighting the American boogieman called "drugs."











Notes:

1: Firearm Violence in the United States Center for Gun Violence Solutions, Johns Hopkins University (up)




read more essays here





Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




Almost all talk about the supposed intractability of things like addiction are exercises in make-believe. The pundits pretend that godsend medicines do not exist, thus normalizing prohibition by implying that it does not limit progress. It's a tacit form of collaboration.

All of our problems with opioids and opiates could have been avoided had the busybody Chicken Littles in America left well enough alone and let folks continue to smoke regulated opium peaceably in their own homes.

Most people think that drugs like cocaine, MDMA, LSD and amphetamines can only be used recreationally. WRONG ! This represents a very naive understanding of human psychology. We deny common sense in order to cater to the drug war orthodoxy that "drugs have no benefits."

Cocaine is not evil. Opium is not evil. Drug prohibition is evil.

William James knew that there were substances that could elate. However, it never occurred to him that we should use such substances to prevent suicide. It seems James was blinded to this possibility by his puritanical assumptions.

@HKSExecEd The use of Ecstasy brought UNPRECEDENTED peace and love to the British dance floors in the 1990s. When are political scientists going to acknowledge the potential for such substances to pull our species back from the brink of nuclear annihilation?

Psychedelics and entheogens should be freely available to all dementia patients. These medicines can increase neuronal plasticity and even grow new neurons. Besides, they can inspire and elate -- or do we puritans feel that our loved ones have no right to peace of mind?

There are a potentially vast number of non-addictive drugs that could be used strategically in therapy. They elate and "free the tongue" to help talk therapy really work. Even "addictive" drugs can be used non-addictively, prohibitionist propaganda notwithstanding.

Trump's lies about America's voting process are typical NAZI and DRUG WAR strategy: raise mendacious doubts about whatever you want to destroy and keep repeating them. It's what Joseph Goebbels called "The Big Lie."

Anytime you hear that a psychoactive drug has not been proven to be effective, it's a lie. People can make such claims only by dogmatically ignoring all the glaringly obvious signs of efficacy.


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

Drama lovers: collect full-cast recordings of classic plays

In my spare time, when I am not shaming drug warriors for their heartless drug policies, I create full-cast recordings of classic plays using the latest in synthetic voices licensed by the Natural Reader company. Snag your copy of my production of Volpone, by Ben Jonson... and follow me on Payhip for more where that came from, including classics like The Post Office, The Double Dealer and The Inspector General. -- Yours in all-too-justified outrage, the Drug War Philosopher @ abolishthedea.com.

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)