What do you do when the entire world has gotten hold of the wrong end of the stick?
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
May 2, 2025
In December of last year, I sent an essay to historian Richard Hutton, author of "The Witch: A History of Fear from Ancient Times to the Present." I politely suggested that the Drug War is the ultimate case of strategic fearmongering by the powers-that-be and that it was therefore an oversight on his part to fail to mention drugs in his book -- the more so given the fact that the "herbs" that he continually mentions uncritically were actually drugs insofar as they manifested psychoactive properties. The difference was that, back then, the populace was in the habit of holding persons responsible for evil rather than focusing on the substances that they used to bring about evil. Today, of course, we blame substances themselves for evil -- first and foremost by demonizing them with the pejorative epithet of "drugs," which in modern parlance refers to a substance that is superstitiously supposed to have no positive uses for anybody, anywhere, at any dose and when used for any reason whatsoever. Unfortunately, Richard only mentions the word "drugs" once in his entire book, and only then in a pejorative fashion, by likening the poison-selling magician to a drug dealer -- as if the kinds of substances that have inspired entire religions are all poisons. How ironic that a book meant to challenge fearmongers should itself contain such fearmongering about the time-honored substances that Drug Warriors have outlawed in defiance of common sense -- nay, in defiance of human progress itself.
The good news is, Mr. Hutton actually responded to the email containing my essay about his book. The bad news is, he merely thanked me for my comments and signed off. Too typical, I'm afraid. Amazing as it is, I have never yet known one single author or philosopher to respond to the substance of my comments, after having written literally hundreds of letters to the movers and shakers in various relevant fields over the last six years. It is as if it is considered bad manners these days merely to bring up the subject of drug prohibition. It really feels as if the smart people have concluded that the Drug War mentality is here to stay and that their best bet is to censor themselves accordingly. And so we have a kind of faux science these days, a world in which our conclusions in fields like psychology and consciousness only make sense if we assume that drug prohibition constitutes a natural baseline for research on all topics -- even political science, wherein pundits never consider the strategic use of empathogens to end hatred in the world and so stave off nuclear annihilation. Meanwhile, psychology mags publish monthly feel-good pieces about ending depression while yet completely ignoring the fact that drug law outlaws all substances that could do just that, and in real-time as well.
And so we live in a world of make-believe today, a world in which we are completely blind to the progress-preventing effects of our superstitious drug demonization. I say superstitious, for to say things like "Fentanyl 1 kills" makes no more sense than to say "Fire bad!" in the presumptuous manner of our paleolithic ancestors. The truth is that dangerous substances CAN be used wisely -- if we do not make a religion out of insisting otherwise.
This leaves a philosopher like myself in the position of Alfred North Whitehead. We both live in a world in which almost everybody has got ahold of the wrong end of the stick. In Whitehead's case, the vast majority of the world had a bifurcated conception of nature, according to which matter is matter and mind is mind and ne'er the twain shall meet. In my case, the vast majority of the world believes that drugs are drugs and meds are meds and ne'er the twain shall meet. The fact is, of course, that psychoactive substances are psychoactive substances, and that labels like "meds" and "drugs" and "herbs" are used (or rather misused) by Drug Warriors to make us think otherwise. Their obvious goal is to linguistically whitewash dependence-causing pills created by materialist chemists by referring to them by the gentle names of "meds" while harshly scorning as "drugs" the sort of time-honored holistic medicines championed historically by indigenous peoples around the world.
"The evolution of modern medicine gave us our current, bifurcated view of drugs: the good ones that treat illness and the bad ones that people use to change their minds and moods." --Jacob Sullum, from Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use, p. 2512
And so I have the same problem as Whitehead in attempting to get my points across. Our arguments are just too novel to be persuasive without the inclusion of many qualifications designed to answer the many kneejerk objections that will naturally occur to a reader who has lived and breathed the fallacious status quo for their entire lifetime. As Whitehead himself phrased this problem in his preface to "The Concept of Nature":
"In the presentation of a novel outlook with wide ramifications, a single line of communications from premises to conclusions is not sufficient for intelligibility. Your audience will construe whatever you say into conformity with their pre-existing outlook."
We should start taking names. All politicians and government officials who work to keep godsends like psilocybin from the public should be held to account for crimes against humanity when the drug war finally ends.
The drug war is a scare campaign to teach us to distrust mother nature and to rely on pharmaceuticals instead.
There are a potentially vast number of non-addictive drugs that could be used strategically in therapy. They elate and "free the tongue" to help talk therapy really work. Even "addictive" drugs can be used non-addictively, prohibitionist propaganda notwithstanding.
America takes away the citizen's right to manage their own depression by making opium and cocaine illegal. Then psychiatrists treat the resulting epidemic of depression and anxiety by damaging the patient's brain with shock therapy.
Wade Davis writes that cocaine was outlawed because 400 people consumed toxic doses worldwide. What about the 49,000 that commit suicide every year because we have outlawed drugs that could cheer them up!!!
Now the US is bashing the Honduran president for working with "drug cartels." Why don't we just be honest and say why we're REALLY upset with the guy? Drugs is just the excuse, as always, now what's the real reason? Stop using the drug war to disguise American foreign policy.
The government makes psychoactive drug approval as slow as possible by insisting that drugs be studied in relation to one single board-certified "illness." But the main benefits of such drugs are holistic in nature. Science should butt out if it can't recognize that fact.
The Shipiba have learned to heal human beings physically, psychologically and spiritually with what they call "onanyati," plant allies and guides, such as Bobinsana, which "envelops seekers in a cocoon of love." You know: what the DEA would call "junk."
Americans believe scientists when they say that drugs like MDMA are not proven effective. That's false. They are super effective and obviously so. It's just that science holds entheogenic medicines to the standards of reductive materialism. That's unfair and inappropriate.
Thomas Szasz was not an extremist when it comes to drugs. The extremists are those who feel that psychiatrists know more about our mind and mood than we do.
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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