a review of essay number 1 in Hallucinogens: A Reader, edited by Charles Grob
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
June 25, 2025
The following remarks are part of a series of responses to the essays contained in the 2001 book "Hallucinogens: A Reader," edited by Charles Grob1. The comments below are in response to essay number 1: "A Conversation with Albert Hofmann."
We outlawed marijuana because its use was associated with Hispanics, we outlawed cocaine because its use was associated with Blacks, we outlawed opium because its use was associated with the Chinese - and just as surely we outlawed psychedelics because its use was associated with anti-establishment young people. Concern about health did not figure into the crackdown on LSD except as window dressing, as part of a media show trial, as part of a controlled political narrative, as a way to justify a preconceived crackdown on dissent. Yet Hofmann naively accepts the pretext that we outlawed psychedelics for health reasons. He fails to realize that, even if this were true, it is anti-scientific and inhumane to outlaw a drug for use by all peoples and in all contexts merely because we believe that it is being "misused" by one group of people in one context, especially when society has no interest in educating users about drugs. It is absurd to outlaw all research on a drug simply because the drug can be misused by white American young people. It is absurd for us to say that a drug has no positive uses and then to outlaw the research and experimentation that could identify positive uses.
Conclusion: Drug prohibition is the problem, not the answer. Drug prohibition is inherently anti-scientific, imperialistic, and racist, for it tells us to judge drugs based on how we feel about the people that we currently see using them. We need to combat this anti-progress mindset. Unless we do so, then every drug will always be subject to criminalization and re-criminalization. As GK Chesterton noted about prohibition in general:
"It is said that the Government must safeguard the health of the community. And the moment that is said, there ceases to be the shadow of a difference between beer and tea. People can certainly spoil their health with tea or with tobacco or with twenty other things. And there is no escape for the hygienic logician except to restrain and regulate them all. If he is to control the health of the community, he must necessarily control all the habits of all the citizens....2"
No matter how safe the use of any drug may become in general, any substance can be successfully criminalized by a demagogue with the help of a lurid news story reported by conglomerate media. This is why we have to expose the current biased standards for drug approval, rather than pretend that they are disinterested and objective and established for reasons of public health. Aspirin kills 3,000 people a year in the UK alone3. If politicians and the media were so minded, they could work Americans up into a frenzy over this death toll and outlaw aspirin. But there is no political will to do so among the moneyed classes.
Again, the prohibitionist mindset is the problem, not drugs, the mindset that tells us that we are free at will to outlaw any drug, provided that we put time and effort into demonizing that drug outside of all context and focus on its cherry-picked links to "misuse" by undesirables.
No drug would ever be outlawed, however, even on the basis of a cost/benefit analysis, were we to actually consider all the costs of prohibition and all the benefits of drugs - and all the costs of NOT re-legalizing them. In that case, we would educate rather than demonize. But we never perform an unbiased analysis of a psychoactive drug. In failing to approve the sorts of drugs that inspire and elate (the kinds of drugs that inspired the Hindu religion), the FDA never considers the dangers of keeping the drugs illegal and thereby subjecting ignorant users to potentially contaminated product at unknown doses. The FDA never considers the suicides that will necessarily result when we outlaw every substance that can provide psychological relief. The FDA never considers that drug prohibition makes shock therapy necessary by outlawing everything that might have made life bearable for the severely depressed. The FDA never considers the thousands of deaths that occur yearly that can be directly linked to drug prohibition: the gun-related violence in inner cities, the sudden "disappearances" in Mexico -- nor do they consider the downsides of eroding time-honored democratic freedoms in the name of drug prohibition. The FDA never considers the downsides of outlawing the religious impulse. In short, we do not perform a risk/benefit analysis of drugs: we simply focus on the risks and legislate accordingly. Finally, the FDA ignores the obvious need for peace, love and understanding in the nuclear age - as if we can easily afford to do without the kinds of drugs that could help bring the world together. In a world with saner values, we would welcome MDMA as the first in a line of phenethylamines that could help humanity survive... and yet this is clearly why the drug is being pilloried, to make sure that this whole movement toward godsend medicines is nipped in the bud.
Yet Hofmann seems to believe that we can reach a level of safety when it comes to LSD use that would justify the drug's relegalization. That is naïve nonsense, of course. It's a big world after all. If conservative politicians do not want drugs like LSD legalized - and they clearly do not - then they will find a way to link the drug to perfidy on the part of undesirables. There is always some news story that they can torture into a morality play on behalf of drug prohibition. With the help of the conglomerate status-quo media, they will keep the public fearing LSD - the same public that watches with hypocritical complacency as Jim Beam bourbon targets prime-time television ads at young people - this despite the fact that liquor kills 178,000 a year in America alone4.
No, no, Albert, the issue has never been about drug safety - it is all about politics, and until drug pundits recognize this fact, we will be dancing to the anti-scientific tune of the racist prohibitionists.
Hallucinogens: A Reader
In 2001, Charles Grob published 'Hallucinogens: A Reader," containing interviews and essays on the subject of drugs. Watch this space for philosophical essays on each essay in the book.
What attracts me about "drug dealers" is that they are NOT interested in prying into my private life. What a relief! With psychiatry, you are probed for pathological behavior on every office visit. You are a child. To the "drug dealer," I am an adult at least.
According to Donald Trump's view of life, Jesus Christ was a chump. We should hate our enemies, not love them.
Until we get rid of all these obstacles to safe and informed use, it's presumptuous to explain problematic drug use with theories about addiction. Drug warriors are rigging the deck in favor of problematic use. They refuse to even TEACH non-problematic use.
"Just ONE HORSE took the life of my daughter." This message brought to you by the Partnership for a Death Free America.
I personally hate beets and I could make a health argument against their legality. Beets can kill for those allergic to them. Sure, it's a rare condition, but since when has that stopped a prohibitionist from screaming bloody murder?
Rather than protesting prohibition as a crackdown on academic freedom, today's scientists are collaborating with the drug war by promoting shock therapy and SSRIs, thereby profiting from the monopoly that the drug war gives them in selling mind and mood medicine.
How else will they scare us enough to convince us to give up all our freedoms for the purpose of fighting horrible awful evil DRUGS? DRUGS is the sledgehammer with which they are destroying American democracy.
Drug warriors are too selfish and short-sighted to fight real problems, so they blame everything on drugs.
Almost every mainstream article about psychology and consciousness is nonsense these days because it ignores the way that drug prohibition has stymied our investigation of such subjects.
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.
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, Why America cracked down on LSD: a review of essay number 1 in Hallucinogens: A Reader, edited by Charles Grob, published on June 25, 2025 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
You have been reading an article entitled, Why America cracked down on LSD: a review of essay number 1 in Hallucinogens: A Reader, edited by Charles Grob, published on June 25, 2025 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
