When you say 'Drugs'

Homepage of the Drug War Philosopher, Brian Quass

When you say 'Drugs'

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

September 5, 2022

When professors say "drugs" without properly qualifying this monstrously "loaded" term, they are parroting drug-war propaganda, for what does "drugs" mean in modern parlance? It means the following:

Medicine for which there is no potential beneficial use: not now, not ever, not here, not there, not anywhere.

April 2025 Update

The fact is, of course, that no such substances exist in the real world. All substances have potential beneficial uses, including the deadly Botox itself. What you have above is, in fact, a political definition of "drugs" which is designed to justify America in its criminalization of almost every psychoactive godsend imaginable which a free people might have otherwise gratefully employed for the benefit of humans and humankind. The term "drugs" is no more a scientific term than the word "scabs": both terms not only denote a noun but they pass judgment on that noun in so doing.

It's no wonder that academics share the modern prejudice against such substances, because it helps them make their peace with the fact that many of these substances are off limits to scientific research by order of the federal government. So instead of loudly protesting this government censorship of scientists, the academic world adopts an attitude of sour grapes toward the whole topic of psychoactive medicine, saying in effect; "Oh, those are just 'drugs,' which have no beneficial uses, and so it's no big deal that we're not allowed to study them. To the contrary, we are glad to do our patriotic part in putting these substances beyond the pale of scientific discourse."

As a fan of the Great Courses (aka Wondrium), I have frequently winced when professors on subjects as diverse as logic and language theory uncritically use the word "drugs" in the political acceptation of that term. I won't name names here, but in one philosophy course, a professor was warning against jumping to unsupported conclusions based on the prejudices of the age in which one lives, only to illustrate that concern by parroting some Drug War lie about psychoactive substances, completely failing to realize that he himself was jumping to unsupported conclusions in the name of the Drug War ideology of substance demonization.

By politicizing the word "drugs" the government has blinded science to hundreds of prima facie cures for all sorts of modern issues, like depression, Alzheimer's ¹ and autism. For the substances that we demonize today under the pejorative catch-all of "drugs" have inspired entire religions in the past. How could these substances NOT have a strong prima facie potential of working wonders in the lives of troubled users, especially given the fact that some of these substances (the psychedelics in particular) have been shown to promote the growth of new neurons in the brain?

Unfortunately, the use of this term does not simply blind us to the existence of medical godsends, as if that weren't enough of a downside in itself. It also serves to enshrine reductive materialism ² as the one way of looking at the world, the one way of being in the world, as Heidegger would put it. After all, we have outlawed all medicines whose MO involves consciousness and feeling -- and so now science can placidly go on its way looking for "real" cures for problems like depression -- in other words, cures that involve chemical imbalances and other fantasies concocted by the Big Pharma PR departments.

This is why Forbes magazine could publish an article in 2021 with the absurd title "Can Laughing Gas help people with treatment-resistant depression?"

A depressed person would never be so ignorant as to ask such a question: of course it would help. The only reason that the question becomes problematic is because drug-war science ignores the obvious world of consciousness and feelings and focuses instead on reductionist causes that the sufferer can never directly see. And so the drug-warrior scientist doesn't care how much a depressed person is laughing when using nitrous oxide, nor how much that person's mood is elevated merely by the fact that they are LOOKING FORWARD to such use. Presumably, if the article's author, Dr. Robert Glatter, were to catch me laughing from Nitrous Oxide, he would tell me: "No, Brian, you are not REALLY happy. Stop using N20 until we can determine if it REALLY works."

To which I answer: "This is good enough for me. But by all means, Robert, please carry on with your attempt to count the number of angels that you can locate on a pinhead."

This is the kind of absurd world that one is supporting every time that they uncritically use the term "drugs."

This would be hilarious, could one breathe deeply enough to consider this dystopia from a Godly point of view for just a moment. But the fact is, this demonization of substances has a huge body count, and I'm not just talking about the fact that 797 blacks were killed in Chicago in 2021 alone due to drug-war violence, for even as we speak, entire Mexican cities are now no-go zones, thanks to the fact that America outlawed a substance that the Inca considered to be a God.

Seen in this light, the uncritical use of the word "drugs" is actually offensive, because it suggests that the speaker is a drug-war collaborator, someone who supports the drug-war ideology that is causing mayhem overseas and empowering stateside demagogues who now plan to execute the minorities that the previous generation of Drug Warrior would have been happy merely to incarcerate.

By Brian Quass, author of The Drug War Comic Book

Author's Follow-up: September 24, 2022

follow-up on essay by the Drug War Philosopher

When W. Golden Mortimer was researching for his book on Coca ³, he queried hundreds of academics to get their input on the topic. The vast majority did not reply, of course, even though this was still almost a century before the official War on Drugs was launched in 1973 by Richard Nixon for the purpose of disempowering his enemies (and not, as Michael Pollan and Rick Strassman seem to think, for the purpose of protecting white young people from their own government-fostered ignorance). But many of those who did respond were indignant that Mortimer would dare even investigate this topic. They told him that they were convinced that the substances in question were evil and that it was therefore wrong to even write about them. They had swallowed the Drug War lie hook, line and sinker. For in reality, there are no substances that are bad in and of themselves, without regard for how they are used, or why or when. It's thinking like that which keeps children in hospices from experiencing relief from their pain with morphine , because many countries would prefer to have their kids suffer than to have them use a substance derived from a supposedly evil substance called opium ⁴ . This is also why we merely "remove life support" for our dying parents, rather than letting them drift easily to sleep with morphine : because the War on Drugs teaches us that it is better for our parents and kids to suffer horrendously rather than to give them the kind of godsend medicines that have inspired entire religions.

This is why the Drug War is so much worse than even its opponents give it credit for. Then, of course, there are the enormously bamboozled proponents of change who believe that the Drug War is a good idea that doesn't work. Au contraire: it is a horrendous and unscientific idea, which is anti-patient, anti-child, anti-the dying, etc. etc. It has deprived millions of Americans from godsend meds, like the coca leaf and MDMA ⁵ , which could safely and non-addictively give folks the relief they need without making them wards of the healthcare state, without killing thousands of Blacks each year in inner cities thanks to the violence that prohibition incentivizes. A good idea that hasn't succeeded? Au contraire, it is a horrible idea which IS succeeding -- in propping up the liquor industry, in giving psychiatrists jobs for life, in swelling the coffers of Big Pharma ⁶ ⁷ , in stealing elections for conservatives by arresting minorities, and in giving America an excuse to intervene in South America at will. Why? So that we can crack down on a plant that the Peruvians considered divine, until the Spanish arrived, threw the Inca into chains, and tried to eradicate the plant from the face of the earth.

Author's Follow-up: October 4, 2022

Psst! Don't tell anyone but even crack cocaine can be used non-addictively. But that's something that the Drug Warriors do not want you to know, because for them, criminalized substances have to be entirely bad, without one redeeming quality. Instead of teaching "safe use," the Drug War lies about psychoactive substances, telling us (as in the DEA scheduling system) that drugs that have inspired entire religions somehow have no potential therapeutic uses whatsoever. That's impossible and a blatant anti-religious lie. But even if there could be such a thing as a plant medicine that had no conceivable good uses for anybody, ever, at any dose, for any reason, the government would have no more right to outlaw it than they would to criminalize water or sunshine. This is why Thomas Jefferson was rolling in his grave when the Reagan DEA stomped onto Monticello ⁸ in 1987 and confiscated the founding father's poppy plants in violation of the principles upon which he founded America.

Author's Follow-up:

April 09, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up

Yes, crack cocaine ⁹ ¹⁰ can be used wisely. See Carl Hart's book "Drug Use for Grown-Ups.¹¹" Yes, opiate withdrawal causes less severe cravings than those caused by going cold-turkey on cigarettes. See Andrew Weil's book "From Chocolate to morphine ¹² .¹³" Yes, psychoactive drugs can inspire and elate and have been the inspiration for the creation of entire religions. See the Rig Veda ¹⁴.

In other words, you have been bamboozled, folks, by the Drug War ideology of substance demonization.

But let me explain why it is crazy to outlaw drugs for health reasons in the first place. It is because health is not a thing, it is a balance. It is a balance of a wide variety of psychological, biochemical and genetic factors. A drug that can be dangerous for one person in one situation when used for one reason at one dosage may yet be a godsend for another person in another situation when used for another reason at another dosage. To outlaw a substance in advance based on just one usage pattern is insane -- it is even a veto on human progress itself. Nay, it is the outlawing of religion, insofar as the Hindu religion owes its very existence to the use of a drug that inspired and elated.

Such prohibition is also inherently racist and xenophobic.

For more on this subject, see my essay entitled The Bill Clinton Fallacy. The idea is basically this: If prohibition saved Roger Clinton, as Bill Clinton seemed to have thought when he was a resident of the Oval Office, then it only did so by killing minority children like Niomi Russell. Niomi is a 15-year-old victim of a drive-by shooting in Washington, D.C. in 2024, and it was substance prohibition that armed the 'hood to the teeth in the first place. For as Ann Heather Thompson wrote in The Atlantic in 2014:

"Without the War on Drugs, the level of gun violence ¹⁵ that plagues so many poor inner-city neighborhoods today simply would not exist."

To repeat:

If drug prohibition saved Roger Clinton, it only did so by killing young minorities like Niomi Russell.

As my essay on this topic points out, this injustice is made all the more outrageous when we consider the fact that Drug Warriors purposefully refuse to teach Americans how to use drugs safely in the first place. They then outsource the dangers that they thereby create to minorities. What a disgrace! Prohibitionists from Bill Clinton to Donald Trump should be down on their knees asking forgiveness for all the deaths of minority children they have caused with their insane policy toward psychoactive medicine. Then they might want to fly down to Mexico and apologize for promoting a drugs policy that has led to the disappearance of 60,000 Mexicans over the last two decades. But then being a Drug Warrior means never having to say your sorry: you just blame all the downsides that you yourself have caused on "drugs" themselves.

Notes for essay entitled When you say 'Drugs':

1: What the Honey Trick Tells us about Drug Prohibition DWP (up)
2: How materialists lend a veneer of science to the lies of the drug warriors DWP (up)
3: Scribd.com: Coca: Divine Plant of the Incas Mortimer MD, W. Golden, Ronin Publishing, Berkeley, California, 2017 (up)
4: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)
5: How the Drug War killed Leah Betts DWP (up)
6: Seife, Charles. 2012. “Is Drug Research Trustworthy?” Scientific American 307 (6): 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1212-56. (up)
7: LaMattina, John. n.d. “Why Is Biopharma Paying 75% of the FDA’s Drug Division Budget?” Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2022/09/22/why-is-biopharma-paying-75-of-the-fdas-drug-division-budget/. (up)
8: The Dark Side of the Monticello Foundation DWP (up)
9: Sigmund Freud's real breakthrough was not psychoanalysis DWP (up)
10: “Freud on Cocaine : Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” 2023. Internet Archive. 2023. https://archive.org/details/freudoncocaine0000freu/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater. (up)
11: Drug Use for Grownups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear Hart, Carl (up)
12: Three takeaway lessons from the use of morphine by William Halsted, co-founder of Johns Hopkins Medical School DWP (up)
13: Weil, Andrew, and Winifred Rosen. 2004. From Chocolate to Morphine : Everything You Need to Know about Mind-Altering Drugs. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. (up)
14: Complete Rig Veda in English (Sakala Shakha). n.d. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/rigvedacomplete. (up)
15: Firearm Violence in the United States Center for Gun Violence Solutions, Johns Hopkins University (up)

read more essays here

Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

The DEA stomped onto Thomas Jefferson's estate in 1987 and confiscated the founding father's poppy plants in violation of everything he stood for, politically speaking. And the TJ Foundation helped them! They sold out Jefferson.

"Can I use poppies, coca, laughing gas, MDMA?" "NO," says the materialist, "We must be SCIENTIFIC! We must fry your brain and give you a lobotomy and make you a patient for life with the psychiatric pill mill! That's true SCIENCE!"

The drug war outlaws everything that could help both prevent addiction and treat it. And then they justify the war on drugs by scaring people with the specter of addiction. They NEED addiction to keep the drug war going.

There are times when it is clearly WRONG to deny kids drugs (whatever the law may say). If your child is obsessed with school massacres, he or she is an excellent candidate for using empathogenic meds ASAP -- or do we prefer even school shootings to drug use???

So much harm could be reduced by shunting people off onto safer alternative drugs -- but they're all outlawed! Reducing harm should ultimately mean ending this prohibition that denies us endless godsends, like the phenethylamines of Alexander Shulgin.

The depressed Canadian Claire Brosseau wants the state to kill her. This is the same state that refuses to let her use drugs that could make her want to live. https://abolishthedea.com/drug_use_is_not_worse_than_death

Folks like Sabet accuse folks like myself of ignoring the "facts." No, it is Sabet who is ignoring the facts -- facts about dangerous horses and free climbing. He's also ignoring all the downsides of prohibition, whose laws lead to the election of tyrants.

There is an absurd safety standard for "drugs." The cost/benefit analysis of the FDA & co. never takes into account the costs of NOT prescribing nor the benefits of a productive life well lived. The "users" are not considered stakeholders.

It is far better to "treat the symptoms" than to irreversibly modify brain chemistry in one particular way based on the theories of a financially-motivated biochemical determinist working for a pharmaceutical company.

There are endless ways that psychoactive drugs could be creatively combined to combat addiction and a million other things. But the drug warrior says that we have to study each in isolation, and then only for treating one single board-certified condition.

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

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.

tombstone for American Democracy, 1776-2024, RIP

(up)

When you say 'Drugs'

Author's Follow-up: September 24, 2022

Author's Follow-up: October 4, 2022

Author's Follow-up:

April 09, 2025

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