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Weed Bashing at WTOP.COM

an open letter to station manager Joel Oxley

by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher




November 6, 2023

ear Mr. Oxley:

The following headline is extremely misleading: 

Marijuana use raises risk of heart attack, heart failure and stroke, studies say


When you read the article, you find that these symptoms are associated with the smoking of ANY substance.

It's clear that the author wanted to damn marijuana and so wrote the headline accordingly.

If accuracy and usefulness had been in the author's mind, the headline would have read as follows:

"Edible marijuana is safest way to enjoy cannabis"


But the Drug War is all about demonizing mother nature's drugs.

Please vet your news stories for drug-bashing headlines like this. Such articles promote the prohibition mentality that has turned America into a police state and destroyed the rule of law in Latin America, all WITHOUT ending drug use, but rather increasing the use of DEADLY DRUGS by forcing users to employ product of which the quality and dose are uncertain.



Author's Follow-up: November 6, 2023



Look, there's nothing wrong about reporting downsides to any drug. But until drugs are depoliticized and legalized, the stories about downsides represent pure propaganda, even if they're true. Why is this? Because the establishment is determined to cite ONLY downsides -- and so all such reports are propaganda when considered collectively. They never consider the value of being relaxed, the value of having a break from full-on sobriety, the value of treating pain, etc. They simply toss mud at the picture of marijuana and hope that some of it sticks. The collective propaganda is exacerbated by the establishment's refusal to recognize the value of a drug that helps some people forswear alcohol, a far deadlier drug than any, if mere statistics tell us anything at all.

Author's Follow-up: November 10, 2023

In fact, all arguments of prohibitionists are based on the false idea that there is no rational reason for "drug use." It's as if the prohibitionists are channeling Dr. Spock. No, there would be no reason for psychoactive drug use if we were all Dr. Spock from Star Trek, oblivious to the yearnings of the heart for self-transcendence, but the inconvenient truth is that we are actually human beings and that consciousness counts, notwithstanding the dogmatic myopia of materialists on this point.

So we can say of prohibitionists what William Brereton said of the critics of opium: "They assume certain statements as existing and acknowledged facts which have never been proved to be such, and then proceed to draw deductions from those alleged facts."

Finally, the decision to use any drug is based on a cost/benefit analysis. And as long as prohibitionists ignore all the benefits, one cannot help but be suspicious of the long lists of costs that they are forever compiling. Nor can science help them in their campaign of substance demonization, because the decision to use any psychoactive drug is based on a cost/benefit analysis that only the user can make, for only the user knows his or her own goals in life, how much they value transcendence, how much they believe with William James, for instance, that we must study other worlds that are not visible to our senses in the sober state.




Next essay: Prohibitionists Never Learn
Previous essay: A Dope Comedy Routine About Drugs

More Essays Here


THE MEDIA AND THE DRUG WAR

Over 45% of traumatic brain injuries are caused by horseback riding (ABC News). Tell your representatives to outlaw horseback riding and make it a federal offence to teach a child how to ride! Brought to you by the Partnership for a Death Free America.
Breaking news : "McDonald's will stay open after petition gathered enough signatures!" If only WTOP would give such front-page coverage to petitions to end the drug war.
I guess the motto for their owner, Hubbard Broadcasting, is PANEM ET CIRCENSES, i.e., bread and circuses.
Cop and detective shows are loaded with subtle drug war propaganda, including lines like, "She had a history of drug use, so..." The implication being that anyone who uses substances that politicians hate cannot be trusted.

essays about
MARIJUANA

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Marijuana Critics Just Don't Get It
The Infuriating Philosophical Idiocy of Kevin Sabet
Kevin Sabet and What-About-Ism
Why Kevin Sabet's approach to drugs is racist, anti-scientific and counterproductive
Breaking News: Scientists Realize That Marijuana may not be Evil Incarnate After All!

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How Logic-Challenged Journalists Support the Drug War
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Why Hollywood Owes Richard Nixon an Oscar
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Open Letter to Lisa Ling
Cop shows as drug war propaganda
COPS: TV Show for Racist Drug Warriors
Common Nonsense from Common Sense Media
America's Obsession with Fascist Drug War Movies
Glenn Close but no cigar
How the Atlantic Supports the Drug War
How Variety and its film critics support drug war fascism
Karolina Zieba just doesn't get it
All these Sons
Colorado plane crash caused by milk!
Drug War Quotes in TV and Movies
Forbes Magazine's Laughable Article about Nitrous Oxide
10 Idiots who helped spread drug war propaganda on Listverse
The Runner: Racist Drug War Agitprop
Moonfall
Enough Drug War Propaganda Movies Already
Movie Warnings from Uncommon Sense
COPS PRESENTS the top 10 traffic stops of 2023
Time for News Outlets to stop promoting drug war lies
The media, not the FDA, approves drugs in America
Drug War Agitprop



front cover of Drug War Comic Book

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, Weed Bashing at WTOP.COM: an open letter to station manager Joel Oxley, published on November 6, 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)