how worried white parents are destroying democracy around the globe in a counterproductive effort to protect their kids
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
June 9, 2026
Sky News reported last night that the UK is preparing to enact a new system to protect young people from supposedly addictive social media. Their plan is to require web surfers to submit their names and proof of age to the government so that bureaucrats (and the algorithms that they create) can henceforth monitor their web use and verify that they are only viewing pages containing age-appropriate content, and for the appropriate amounts of time (whatever that might be and however that might be calculated). I do not know the details of the plan yet -- indeed, the proponents have not yet hammered them out -- but I have no interest in learning them because the very idea of such a government power grab is an anathema to me, and I do not even consider myself to be a Libertarian.
It is a sign of the times that one is dismissed as a Libertarian for expressing qualms about the government proposing to monitor the pastime activities of individual citizens in order to keep them "safe." And yet this, I think, is why democracy is starting to fail in the west: because we no longer wish to be free; we wish to be safe, instead, no matter what it takes: even if it means inviting Big Brother into the bedrooms of our children to monitor their web-surfing activity in real-time. Needless to say, the legislation that we create for that purpose is only aimed at "saving" one demographic (aka, "the troubled white teenager") by throwing all sorts of other demographics under the bus and setting a precedent that will give the government a future excuse to monitor web surfers for all new reasons that will never have occurred to the Chicken Little parents of our time.
In Ecclesiastes 10:16, King Solomon warns us that: "Woe to the land whose prince is a child." He might have added that: "Double woe to the democracy whose only valued citizen is a child."
In his histories of drug prohibition, Mike Jay explains how President Jimmy Carter was not particularly interested in "cracking down" on marijuana use but that he was pestered into doing so by indignant white parents in California who were upset about their inability to control their own kids. I need hardly add that the parents did not want education programs for their kids, they did not want drug choice for their kids, they did not want product regulation for their kids, they did not want counseling about safe use: No, they wanted a crackdown, they wanted the arrest and punishment of those who dared to use Mother Nature's plant medicine. And what was the result? The prison population increased by over 300% over the next half century, effectively ruining the lives of over 2.5 million young people!
If anyone doubts that claim, I suggest that they read "War On Us" by Colleen Cowles1 to get some idea of the indignities to which drug users are subjected in our misnamed "justice system," a system that has been deformed in the interest of prosecutors to accommodate the millions of perpetrators of the many drug-related crimes that prohibitionists have added to the books over the course of the last century. And how do prosecutors accommodate these millions of criminal cases that have been created out of whole cloth by our unprecedented draconian drug laws? Easy. They threaten the drug suspects with long sentences if they should insist on their right to a time-consuming trial. And these threats work. This is why 97% of drug cases end with plea deals -- and ankle bracelets, so that the government can monitor the paroled users like so much cattle.
This is how worried parents "save the world" -- by throwing everybody but their own white kids under the bus -- although, in practice, many of these "saved" white kids will themselves be eventually hoisted by their parent's own petard.
This latest Sky News story reminded me of the fuss in the UK several years ago about the use of laughing gas. A handful of young people found a way to misuse the substance (at least as the word "misuse" is defined by worried parents) and the media outlets -- particularly Channel 5 -- started essentially demanding that nitrous oxide be outlawed. Actually, I think that the UK had already outlawed the use of laughing gas (at least for the purposes of attaining transcendent mental states, or in other words they had already outlawed the kind of use of the gas that was essential to the philosophical work of William James), but the journalists were responding to perceived loopholes in existing law. If you wonder why I am not being specific here, it is because I get very irritated every time I read the routinely biased media stories on this subject, and so I frankly do not even wish to look this matter up at this moment. Feel free to look up the details for yourself: I am only interested in the philosophy of this question. In any case, I'll eventually learn the irritating details for myself, will I or nil I, as I poke about the mainstream Web to locate more evidence of the west's superstitious fear of psychoactive medicines.
The result of this media-inspired fearmongering was predictable enough: N20 was outlawed -- or at least it was outlawed more thoroughly than ever -- and the habitually worried parents, appeased only for the moment, soon began looking for other laws that they could pass to protect their kids. Isn't the legal system wonderful, by the way? If little Billy is eating too many Twinkies, you don't have to waste your time as a parent trying to change his eating habits by introducing him to passionate role models in the culinary community! All you have to do is launch a parent-driven campaign to outlaw Twinkies instead! A little self-righteous indignation on your part can go a long way with the help of a sympathetic media, one which agrees with you that the safety of our poor defenseless wee little white children comes before every other consideration on the planet, whatever Thomas Jefferson or John Locke might have had to say on the matter.
This obsession with safety would be funny, were it not for the fact that it has tragic real-world consequences. The "safer" that parents make the world for their kids with their ever proliferating drug laws, the more likely it is that the depressed will commit suicide or suffer in silence behind closed doors. In the words of Thomas Szasz: “The laws that deny healthy people 'recreational' drugs also deny sick people 'therapeutic' drugs.”
Key Takeaways:
We no longer wish to be free in the west, we wish to be 'safe' instead.
Jimmy Carter was goaded to crack down on marijuana by white parents in California, after which record numbers of Blacks were thrown in jail.
97% of drug cases end in plea deals.
The UK outlawed laughing gas, completely without regard for the obvious philosophical and psychological benefits of the gas.
I should have added to that last post: "I in no way want to glorify or condone drug demonization."
Another problem with MindMed's LSD: every time I look it up on Google, I get a mess of links about the stock market. The drug is apparently a godsend for investors. They want to profit from LSD by neutering it and making it politically correct: no inspiration, no euphoria.
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.
When Rick Strassman and Michael Pollan call for continued prohibition to protect young people, they ignore the ENORMOUS fact that prohibition has destroyed inner cities around the world. Wake up, guys! Prohibition is evil, not drugs! Ignorance is evil, not education!
Health is not a quality, it's a balance. To decide drug legality based on 'health' grounds thus opens a Pandora's box of different points of view.
Freud's real discovery was that drugs like cocaine could make psychiatry UNNECESSARY for the vast majority of people. The medical establishment hated the idea -- so they judged the drug based on its worst possible use!
For those who want to understand what's going on with the drug war from a philosophical point of view, I recommend chapter six of "Eugenics and Other Evils" by GK Chesterton.
In a sane world, we would learn to strategically fight drugs with drugs.
In a free future, newspapers will have philosophers on their staffs to ensure that said papers are not inciting consequence-riddled hysteria through a biased coverage of drug-related mishaps.
Daily opium use is no more outrageous than daily antidepressant use. In fact, it's less outrageous. It's a time-honored practice and can be stopped with a little effort and ingenuity, whereas it is almost impossible to get off some antidepressants because they alter brain chemistry.
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.
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