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There is a Specter Haunting Science

the specter of the Drug War

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

January 7, 2020



An actual speech from an actually imagined meeting of the National Science Foundation

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm afraid there was a bit of a typo in the bulletin for today's science lecture. My speech today is not going to be on, and I quote, "Genetic Variability in Hydrastis Canadensis." (I'm not sure what your secretary was smoking when she came up with that title, since it bears so little resemblance to the actual topic of my proposed animadversions for this morning's session. Humph.)


[boo]

Update: May 25, 2025

The actual title of my address today is: "Scientists are Cowards: Yes, I'm talking to you."


[boo]

And I begin. Ahem.

There is a specter haunting Europe - and the entire free-world for that matter -- the specter of the anti-scientific Drug War.

[gasp]

You doubt it? Just hear me out.

Suppose that the Catholic Church had come forth in the last half-century and told you that there were thousands of plants that you scientists were no longer allowed to study, on pain of being ostracized, removed from your job, or perhaps even arrested?

You guys would be up in arms. Especially the rabid atheists among us. Not to mention any names, of course (such as Daniel Dennett or Sam Harris or Michael Ruse or Richard Dawkins). You'd be like: How dare the Church tell science what it can and cannot study?

[applause]

Enough with the hypocritical applause, folks, because guess what: you scientists DID let an outside force trump the cause of science over the last 50 years - it's just that the force in question was the government, not religion.

[gasp]

The Drug Warriors declared that you must stop studying a wide variety of psychoactive plants (on pain of the aforesaid penalties), and you guys essentially said, in the immortal words of Sergeant Schultz from "Hogan's Heroes": "Jawohl, Herr Kommandant. I know no-think about such plants, I say no-think about such plants!"

QED: You scientists are cowards. End of discussion.

You failed to push back and declare science off-limits to political manipulation. Not only did you thereby do a disservice to science, setting a fascist precedent for ages to come, but you thereby also consigned millions of depressed mortals to decades of unnecessary psychological suffering, suffering that could have been so profoundly alleviated by the advised introduction of psychedelic therapy, using all those psychoactive plants that the government had ordered you to ignore.

[murmur]


Hey, what can I say, folks: tell the truth and shame the devil, right?

Oh, nice. Now you're sending up your security guards to force me off stage? For shame. "Get your hands off me, you damn dirty security guard!"

Leave go! I'm almost finished!

The good news is, you scientists can make up for this pusillanimous oversight by belatedly standing up to government today, through the many scientific organizations here in the States and abroad, and declaring the obvious: that science must be free and that government must revoke all the disincentives that they have put in place in order to keep Americans from acquiring a dispassionate understanding of psychoactive plants.

Do it for science - and for the psychologically suffering around the globe.

It's time for a new Magna Carta, one that puts government in its place with respect to science!

All right, all right, I'm leaving, Tarzan!

What kills me is, the atheists among you write whole books about the dangers of the Church interfering with scientific investigation, a merely hypothetical -- if not absolutely paranoid -- concern, but they never say anything -- not one word -- about the subjugation that is taking place right in front of them even as we speak: the subjugation of scientific investigation to the political demands of the Drug War.



Author's Follow-up:

May 25, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up




It is five years later and the idea for a Magna Carta for academic freedom1 is as unimaginable as ever in our brainwashed world. But at least I have gone on record so that future generations can laud me as prescient -- in the unlikely event that these words will long survive my dissolution. For as I write, these words are being passed along to you via a hosting service that will shut down shortly after I do.

But I should not pick on scientists alone. The outlawing of drugs is the outlawing of religious liberty, insofar as it is the outlawing of just the sorts of substances that have inspired entire religions. So it is not just the job of scientists to push back against the hateful ideology of substance demonization. It is our duty as freedom-loving citizens of the world as well.

Oh, what a sick thing is drug prohibition! It brought about enormous violence -- and instead of acknowledging that fact, Americans created movies like "Scarface" and "The Godfather," movies 2 3 that luxuriate in the violent world that we ourselves have created by our unprecedented outlawing of all psychoactive medicines that inspire and elate. It is as if we look at the violence that we have created by drug prohibition as a business opportunity and a way of life rather than as a problem.

We have created a whole new genre of cop shows -- for absent drug law, most cops would be busy helping little old ladies across the street. Drug law brought gunfire to the streets, and undercover operations, and stakeouts, and SWAT raids, and flashy press conferences revealing confiscated "junk."

Conservatives love this violent new world that they have created, for it keeps the public's mind off of social change, whether on behalf of providing healthcare access, reducing income inequality, or anything else. It is a game of divide and conquer. As long as we can keep the country violent enough and blame that violence on drugs and minorities, then potential foes of the status quo will never come together.









Notes for essay entitled There is a Specter Haunting Science: the specter of the Drug War:

1: Coverup on Campus DWP (up)
2: Glenn Close but no cigar DWP (up)
3: Running with the torture loving DEA DWP (up)




read more essays here





Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




When people tell us there's nothing to be gained from using mind-improving drugs, they are embarrassing themselves. Users benefit from such drugs precisely to the extent that they are educated and open-minded. Loudmouth abstainers are telling us that they lack these traits.

There are hundreds of things that we should outlaw before drugs (like horseback riding) if, as claimed, we are targeting dangerous activities. Besides, drugs are only dangerous BECAUSE of prohibition, which compromises product purity and refuses to teach safe use.

Every time I see a psychiatrist, I feel like I'm playing a game of make-believe. We're both pretending that hundreds of demonized medicines do not exist and could be of no use whatsoever.

Prohibitionists have the same M O they've had for the last 100+ years: blame drugs for everything. Being a drug warrior is never having the decency to say you're sorry -- not to Mexicans, not to inner-city crime victims, not to patients who go without adequate pain relief...

Med-dependent patients of the world, unite -- to end drug prohibition, that is. You have nothing to lose but your prescription bottles and your status as a ward of the healthcare state.

Even fans of sacred medicine have been brainwashed to believe that we do not know if such drugs "really" work: they want microscopic proof. But that's a western bias, used strategically by drug warriors to make the psychotropic drug approval process as glacial as possible.

After a long life, I have come to the conclusion that when all the establishment is united, it is always wrong. (Harold MacMillan)

The FDA should have no role in approving psychoactive medicine. They evaluate them based on materialist standards rather than holistic ones. In practice, this means the FDA ignores all glaringly obvious benefits.

The evidence has been in for well over a century now: people want to use psychoactive substances to transcend the rational mind. It's about time we stopped punishing them for that.

"Judging" psychoactive drugs is hard. Dosage counts. Expectations count. Setting counts. In Harvey Rosenfeld's book about the Spanish-American War, a volunteer wrote of his visit to an "opium den": "I took about four puffs and that was enough. All of us were sick for a week."


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






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