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 need to start thinking of drug-related deaths like we do about car accidents: They're terrible, and yet they should move us to make driving safer, not to outlaw driving. To think otherwise is to swallow the drug war lie that "drugs" can have no positive uses.
I'm told antidepressant withdrawal is fine because it doesn't cause cravings. Why is it better to feel like hell than to have a craving? In any case, cravings are caused by prohibition. A sane world could also end cravings with the help of other drugs.
The outlawing of opium eventually resulted in an "opioid crisis"? The message is clear: people want self-transcendence. If we don't let them find it safely, they will find it dangerously.
"Dope Sick"? "Prohibition Sick" is more like it. The very term "dope" connotes imperialism, racism and xenophobia, given that all tribal cultures have used "drugs" for various purposes. "Dope? Junk?" It's hard to imagine a more intolerant, dismissive and judgmental terminology.
Prohibition is wrong root and branch. It seeks to justify the colonial disdain for indigenous healing practices through fearmongering.
The term "drugs" is no more objective than the term "scabs." Both are meant to defame the things that they connote.
Everyone's biggest concern is the economy? Is nobody concerned that Trump has promised to pardon insurrectionists and get revenge on critics? Is no one concerned that Trump taught Americans to doubt democracy by questioning our election fairness before one single vote was cast?
Another problem with MindMed's LSD: every time I look it up on Google, I get a mess of links about the stock market. The drug is apparently a godsend for investors. They want to profit from LSD by neutering it and making it politically correct: no inspiration, no euphoria.
Drug prohibition is a crime against humanity.
The goal of drug-law reform should be to outlaw prohibition. Anything short of that, and our basic rights will always be subject to veto by fearmongers. Outlawing prohibition would restore the Natural Law of Jefferson, which the DEA scorned in 1987 with its raid on Monticello.
We need to start thinking of drug-related deaths like we do about car accidents: They're terrible, and yet they should move us to make driving safer, not to outlaw driving. To think otherwise is to swallow the drug war lie that "drugs" can have no positive uses.
