Welcome to 'What's My Line: Drug War Edition.' Here is your host, Blaze Thunderstone.
Today's mystery guest is Andy from Staten Island, New York. Andy, how are you doing today?
Great, Blaze, thanks.
Let's ask some questions to see if our contestants can figure out what you do for a living. Fire when ready, Mary.
Does your job have anything to do with breaking down doors and throwing grandmothers to the floor?
You might say that, yes.
Very interesting. Steve?
If I begged for mercy while you were ransacking my house, would you be likely to cut me some slack?
Ha, you wish.
I think we'll take that as a no. Harmony, your question, please.
If you broke down my door and I did not immediately get down on the floor, would you shoot me?
Of course. You would have it coming to you, in that case.
Time is up, I am afraid. Mary, what do you think that Andy here does for a living?
It's hard to say, however, I think he might be a member of the Nazi Gestapo.
Oh, close one, Mary, but that is not quite the correct answer. Steve?
Is Andy one of those mindless thugs who goes around enforcing protection rackets for the Mafia?
Oh! Once again, that's very close, but it is not the precise answer that we are looking for. Harmony, what do you think is Andy's job?
Well, if he is not in the Gestapo and he is not part of the Mob... is he one of those DEA agents who destroys houses on a whim and answers to nobody, thereby constituting an abomination in a supposedly free country?
Exactly, Harmony, well done. Yes, Andy is indeed one of those D E A agents who destroys houses on a whim and answers to nobody, thereby constituting an abomination in a supposedly free country!
You have been listening to What's My Line, Drug War edition, with your host, Blaze Thunderstone.
Addiction thrives BECAUSE of prohibition, which limits drug choice and discourages education about psychoactive substances and how to use them wisely.
It is a violation of religious liberty to outlaw substances that inspire and elate. The Hindu religion was inspired by just such a drug.
We live in a make-believe world in the US. We created it by outlawing all potentially helpful psychological meds, after which the number-one cause of arrest soon became "drugs." We then made movies to enjoy our crackdown on TV... after a tough day of being drug tested at work.
To say that taking SSRIs daily is better than using opium daily is a value judgement, not a scientific one.
The most addictive drugs have a bunch of great uses, like treating pain and inspiring great literature. Prohibition causes addiction by making their use as problematic as possible and denying knowledge and choices. It's always wrong to blame drugs.
There are plenty of "prima facie" reasons for believing that we could eliminate most problems with drug and alcohol withdrawal by chemically aided sleep cures combined with using "drugs" to fight "drugs." But drug warriors don't want a fix, they WANT drug use to be a problem.
We know that anticipation and mental focus and relaxation have positive benefits -- but if these traits ae facilitated by "drugs," then we pretend that these same benefits somehow are no longer "real." This is a metaphysical bias, not a logical deduction.
There are no merely recreational drugs. All drugs that elate have obvious potential uses for the depressed.
An Englishman's home is his castle.
An American's home is a bouncy castle for the DEA.
Kids should be taught beginning in grade school that drug prohibition is wrong.
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..."
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.
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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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