When Judges DO NOT Believe in Natural Law

in response to the Atlantic article by Anthony Murray

Dear Mr. Murray:

In regard to your Atlantic article, you say that democracy suffers "When Judges Believe in Natural Law"¹. But I would like to ask you the following question: What happens when judges give up on the concept of natural law?

ANSWER: The War on Drugs happens, which is based on the concept that a government can take over our rights to Mother Nature's bounty. Surely that is outrageous in the eyes of common sense, not to say world history. Nor is it even Christian, since the Christian god said that his bounty was good. If the concept of natural law upon which America was founded means anything at all, has any power to inspire or deter, then natural law says this: that human beings have the right to what Locke called the earth and all that lies therein.

Sure, we must combat the problem of natural law leading to subjective judicial outcomes based on specific religious beliefs -- but you seem to want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. By throwing out natural law, we return unbridled license to popular opinion led by demagogues. Surely, Jefferson was spinning in his grave when the DEA stomped onto Monticello ² in 1987 and confiscated his poppy plants³.

But you seem to say that, because natural law can be "abused" by those with narrow religious beliefs, we should hold no truths whatsoever to be self-evident. That idea has given the green light to a war on plant medicine that has outlawed entire religions, criminalized the substances that William James said we must investigate⁴, denied necessary pain medicine to those in hospice⁵ (100s of Indian hospitals no longer dare to even stock morphine ⁶ ) and it has completely censored academia, which cranks out endless articles about addiction and depression and consciousness in which they pretend that outlawed psychoactive medicines either do not exist or that they have no beneficial qualities whatsoever (thereby ignoring all that psychoactive experiences might tell us about the subjects in question)⁷. This Drug War has arrested millions of minorities by tempting the young and poor with wild profits -- and then arresting them when they took the bait -- thereby directly leading to the election of folks like Donald Trump by relatively small margins⁸.

The price of ignoring Natural Law is the hateful War on Drugs, which is a folly that American democracy is not likely to survive. Indeed, the 1st and 4th amendments are no longer valid in the USA thanks to the Drug War -- and property can be seized at the government's whim -- and religious freedom is outlawed, unless a church follows the substance-use policy of Christian Scientists⁹. And this in a country where we claim that guns do not kill people.

As an enemy of the Drug War, I cringe when I hear folks dissing natural law -- for your doctrine seems to say that government does indeed have a right to outlaw nature -- and that is something I will never believe -- nor would Jefferson.

Author's Follow-up: February 5, 2024

I am not saying that I am comfortable with the ways that Clarence Thomas might invoke natural law; but Martin Luther King himself invoked such law when he spoke of our God-given right to freedom and insisted that no law is above this right or can justly countermand it.

"We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights."¹⁰

It is surely throwing out the baby with the bath water to claim that we have no inalienable rights whatsoever just because some may, in our view, misuse that term.

Once we concede that there are no such rights, then Mother Nature is no longer ours by right -- which is the absurd result that should make us rethink our priorities. Once we concede that there are no such rights, then government may tax the very air we breathe. But I am at a loss for citing more dire power-grabs from government, since government's claim to control Mother Nature is the power-grab par excellence, for it denies us the right to pain relief on our own terms, and when a government controls pain, it has its hooks in our flesh. By controlling psychoactive substances, it tells us literally how we can think and feel about this world -- a far more dire censorship than merely outlawing books.

Of course, even on the grounds of expediency, the Drug War is insane -- for if we were to outlaw all activities that had a similar (or worse) risk profile than drug use, we would give up horseback riding and skiing and we would not even be driving automobiles¹¹. The only remaining grounds for outlawing drugs is an anti-scientific and ahistorical view that psychoactive substances can have no good uses for anybody, anywhere, ever -- a viewpoint that has been responsible for immense suffering over the last 100 years, because Drug Warriors are blind to all the stakeholders in the drug debate -- except for the white suburban young people that they claim they want to protect -- while locking up their black counterparts in the 'hood, turning inner cities into shooting galleries, and destroying the rule of law in Latin America.

Notes for essay entitled When Judges DO NOT Believe in Natural Law: in response to the Atlantic article by Anthony Murray:

1: When Judges Believe in 'Natural Law' Murray, Anthony, The Atlantic, 2024 (up)
2: The Dark Side of the Monticello Foundation DWP (up)
3: How the Monticello Foundation betrayed Jefferson's Legacy in 1987 DWP (up)
4: William James rolls over in his grave as England bans Laughing Gas DWP (up)
5: Overdoses soared even as prescription pain pills plunged Rich, Steven, 2023 (up)
6: Three takeaway lessons from the use of morphine by William Halsted, co-founder of Johns Hopkins Medical School DWP (up)
7: How Scientific American reckons without the drug war DWP (up)
8: How the Drug War gave the 2016 election to Donald Trump DWP (up)
9: Drug Warriors and Their Prey: From Police Power to Police State Miller, Richard Lawrence, Bloomsbury Academic, New York, 1996 (up)
10: Letter from Jail King Jr., Martin Luther King (up)
11: Horses Kill The Partnership for a Death Free America (up)




read more essays here

Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

Had the DEA been active in the Punjab and 1500 BCE, there would be no Hindu religion today.

A company will be put out of business if someone happens to die while using "drugs," even if the drug was not really responsible for the death.

When folks die in horse-related accidents, we need to be asking: who sold the victim the horse? We've got to crack down on folks who peddle this junk -- and ban books like Black Beauty that glamorize horse use.

Prohibition is a crime against humanity. It forces us to use shock therapy on the severely depressed since we've outlawed all viable alternatives. It denies medicines that could combat Alzheimer's and/or render it psychologically bearable.

Rick Strassman reportedly stopped his DMT trials because some folks had bad experiences at high doses. That is like giving up on aspirin because high doses of NSAIDs can kill.

The December Scientific American features a story called "The New Nuclear Age," about a trillion-dollar plan to add 100s of ICBM's to 5 states, which an SA editorial calls "kick me" signs. This Neanderthal plan comes from pols who think that compassion-boosting drugs are evil!

Harm Reduction is not enough. We need Benefit Production as well. The autistic should be able to use compassion-enhancing drugs; dementia patients should be able to use drugs that speed up and sharpen mental processes.

If our loved ones should experience severe depression and visit an emergency room for treatment, they will be started on a regime of dependence-causing Big Pharma drugs. They will not be given any drugs that elate and inspire.

I've found that no one thinks I "have standing" when I comment about drugs. I'm just a guy who's been turned into a patient for life thanks to drug prohibition. People think that the real experts are the doctors and scientists who profit from the status quo.

The DEA should be tried for crimes against humanity. They have been lying about drugs for 50 years and running interference between human beings and Mother Nature in violation of natural law, depriving us of countless potential and known godsends in order to create more DEA jobs.


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

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..."

Purchase Your Copy

Diary of a Drug Fiend

This is the only full-cast recording of Aleister Crowley's 1922 classic paeon to common sense. It is the first book -- and so far almost the only book -- to stake out a philosophy of drug use that is compatible with human freedom, one in which we learn to use drugs as wisely as possible for the benefit of humanity. This recording was produced by the Drug War Philosopher and your purchases help support his effort to push back against the tragically counterproductive policy of drug prohibition, in the name of human freedom and of humanity's right to heal.

Purchase Your Copy

No cookies, no ads paid for by amoral and immoral billionaires (or trillionaires).


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.

The Partnership for a Death Free America is a proud sponsor of The Drug War Philosopher website @ abolishthedea.com.

Copyright 2026, Brian Ballard Quass Contact: quass@quass.com

(up)