What the series 'Deadline: Crime' tells us about drug prohibition

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What the series 'Deadline: Crime' tells us about drug prohibition

or at least what it SHOULD tell us

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

May 17, 2026

If you want to see how thoroughly the law enforcement approach to drug use has compromised the health of young people, try binge-watching "Deadline: Crime" with Tamron Hall ¹, a series about homicide in the suburbs. You will find that every other episode has at least one character who is said to have had a "problem" with drugs. Every other episode. There are almost no episodes in which drugs have any direct role in the featured homicide, but there always seems to be at least one cousin of the victim of the day or one red herring of a suspect whom we're told had drug-related issues or struggles, etc. This drug-related factoid is always presented as a dramatic revelation, as if the viewers were supposed to think: "My God, if the principals in the case are involved with drugs, God knows WHAT'S going on here!" This is how America derives entertainment value out of the ruined lives that its own drug policies have brought about.

It makes you wonder when the penny is going to drop. When are our psychologists and scientists going to learn a lesson from this prevalence of drug users in our communities? When are they finally going to realize that the desire to modify consciousness is not a pathology at all, nor is it a crime, but it is rather a normal human propensity? One look at history should have told them this, even if they can draw no conclusions from the evidence that is right before their eyes. Whether it is the beer swilling of the Sumerians, the coca chewing of the Inca, the therapeutic use of mushrooms by the Mazatec, the religious use of peyote by North American tribes, or the drinking of the Soma juice which inspired the Vedic and hence the Hindu religion: the species Homo sapiens likes to modify consciousness. To think otherwise, is to engage in the wishful thinking of a Christian Scientist.

Edgar Allan Poe could have been addressing the naive American Drug Warriors when he wrote the following in "The Imp of the Perverse";

It would have been wiser, it would have been safer to classify, (if classify we must), upon the basis of what man usually or occasionally did, and was always occasionally doing, rather than upon the basis of what we took it for granted the Deity intended him to do.

The lesson of both modern and ancient history is that people want to alter consciousness. Nor is this desire always the expression of hedonism as the puritan prohibitionists seem to think. There are endless potential positive reasons to use drugs as well, as, for instance, to overcome depression or to follow up on the studies of consciousness undertaken by William James. Prohibitionists pretend that the only stakeholders in drug legalization are worried parents, but this is just not true. It's just that no other stakeholders have yet dared to speak up and demand their rights.

The depressed are stakeholders in the drug debate when we outlaw almost every naturally occurring substance that could cheer them up. Philosophers are stakeholders when we outlaw all substances whose use could help us evaluate the arguments of William James and Immanuel Kant with respect to the nature of consciousness. Senior citizens with dementia are stakeholders when we outlaw all substances that drastically increase concentration, some of which even grow new neurons in the brain. Even kindergartners are stakeholders when we outlaw all the entheogenic drugs whose strategic use could help end school shootings.

And why do we think that American young people are having problems with drugs in the first place?

It's almost impossible not to have a problem with drugs in a world in which your government is spending over $50 billion a year to render drug use problematic. How? By refusing to regulate supply as to quality and dosage, refusing to teach safe use, and by creating a playing field in which would-be drug users are forced to deal with bloodthirsty gangs and cartels -- and, of course, by threatening to arrest you, and even refusing to allow you to work in America should your urine be found to contain substances of which politicians disapprove. In such a world, any use of an outlawed substance qualify as a problem by definition; it can even qualify as an addiction, at least in the minds of Drug Warriors, who are not especially known for their powers of logical discrimination.

In the series "Deadline: Crime," the suspect with a "dark history" of drug use is almost always a red herring, leading the viewer down blind alleys with respect to the homicide of the day, but the near omnipresence of such characters in the show's roster of suspects has a relevance of its own. It shows us that the world is full of drug users; they are our friends, family members and neighbors. They are to be found on every single suburban street, this despite the fact that the U.S. government has spent over a trillion dollars now in an effort to end so-called drug use in America ². This tells us in turn that the War on Drugs is truly a war on us, a fact that author Colleen Cowles has recently helped to document in her book of that name ³ ⁴ ⁵.

Key Takeaways:

Drug users are omnipresent in shows like Deadline: Crime, showing that the War on Drugs is a War on Us
All cultures have used psychoactive substances to transcend rational consciousness.
The lesson of history is that people want to alter consciousness.
Psychoactive substances can be used for many more reasons than mere hedonism.
Outlawed drugs can help end school shootings and treat Alzheimer's and dementia.
Drug Warriors have spent a trillion dollars to stop drug use, and yet drug users are found on every suburban street.

Notes for essay entitled What the series 'Deadline: Crime' tells us about drug prohibition: or at least what it SHOULD tell us:

1: Deadline: Crime with Tamron Hall. 2026. The Internet Movie Database. IMDB. May 17, 2026. https://imdb.com. (up)
2: “War on Us – the War on Drugs Is a War on All of Us.” 2019. Waronus.com. 2019. http://waronus.com/. (up)
3: In 'War On Us', Colleen Cowles explains how the government denies drug users the right to a fair trial by threatening them with long jail terms unless they sign a plea deal for a crime that they may not have even committed. She shows how felony convictions for drug users block them from holding a wide variety of jobs in America, how parole officers are empowered to micromanage their lives, and how an harassing justice system treats them like cattle by forcing them to wear the kind of movement-monitoring ankle bracelets that were originally designed for use by psychopathic killers. (up)
4: War on Us by Colleen Cowles, J.D. DWP (up)
5: “War on Us – the War on Drugs Is a War on All of Us.” 2019. Waronus.com. 2019. http://waronus.com/. (up)

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against the hateful war on US

Drug prohibition is a crime against humanity. It is the outlawing of our right to take care of our own health.

Wanna show drug warriors the error of their ways? Legalize all less dangerous drugs than alcohol and then deny work to those who test positive for liquor and confiscate their property if beer cans are found on-site.

If we encourage folks to use antidepressants daily, there is nothing wrong with them using heroin daily. A founder of Johns Hopkins used morphine daily and he not only survived, but he thrived.

There's a run of addiction movies out there, like "Craving!" wherein they actually personify addiction as a screaming skeleton. Funny, drug warriors never call for a Manhattan Project to end addiction. Addiction is their golden goose.

The Drug War is based on two HUGE lies: 1) that prohibition has no downsides, & 2) that drug use has no upsides.

We give kids drugs to improve their concentration -- but if adults use drugs to concentrate, we call them names and throw them in jail.

"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."

I'd like to become a guinea pig for researchers to test the ability of psychoactive drugs to make aging as psychologically healthy as possible. If such drugs cannot completely ward off decrepitude, they can surely make it more palatable. The catch? Researchers have to be free.

Drug-designing chemists have no expertise in deciding what constitutes a cure for depression. As Schopenhauer wrote: "The mere study of chemistry qualifies a man to become an apothecary, but not a philosopher."

Americans won't be true grown-ups until they learn to react to drug deaths the same way that they react to deaths from horseback riding and mountain climbing.

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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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What the series 'Deadline: Crime' tells us about drug prohibition

or at least what it SHOULD tell us

Key Takeaways:

Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

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

Diary of a Drug Fiend