open letter to the Christian Science propaganda organization called DARE
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
June 10, 2022
t's wrong to tell kids to say no to drugs. That's Christian Science. That's religious indoctrination. Why do you assume that mind medicine is evil? You surely don't think that physical medicine is evil. Some of the drugs that you tell kids to say "No" to have inspired entire religions. So stop the CHRISTIAN SCIENCE indoctrination.
It's fine to teach kids not to accept drugs from kids and strangers, but it's wrong to teach them to despise the politically defined boogieman called "drugs."
Organizations like DARE increase substance abuse because you're always reminding kids about "DRUGS DRUGS DRUGS!" You never let them forget about it. Well, guess what:
that just gives kids ideas. If they want to rebel, they know what to do: take those dirty evil awful drugs that the parents are always trying to frighten them about.
Check out the research: the drugs that you demonize could be godsends for the depressed and lonely. But organizations like yours have forced depressed folks like myself to go an entire lifetime without the godsend medicine that grows at my very feet, all so that you can demonize mother nature's plant medicine -- after racist politicians have given alcohol and tobacco a great big MULLIGAN, even though those drugs kill half a million Americans every year!
If you're going to tell kids to say no to drugs, then stop being hypocritical. Tell them to say no to Big Pharma antidepressants -- upon which ONE IN FOUR AMERICAN WOMEN ARE HOOKED FOR LIFE. Tell them to say no to coffee. Tell them to say no to sugar. Tell them to say no to Pepto-Bismol, aspirin and heart medicine.
Or better yet, tell them the unvarnished truth about ALL drugs, including alcohol and tobacco, not just those spectacular but rare anecdotes of abuse that drug-haters cite whenever the drugs that they hate have proven to be extraordinarily safe, statistically speaking.
Speaking of which...
SCHOOL SHOOTINGS could be ended by the therapeutic use of the drug Ecstasy, a drug that teaches folks to care about their fellow human being, but you guys are so caught up in a frenzy of knee-jerk drug demonization that you can't even imagine this glaringly obvious solution to this enormous problem of our time.
In short, DARE promotes an unscientific view of plant medicine. It is a jaundiced drug-war view that has censored American scientists, caused civil wars overseas, empowered a self-styled Drug War Hitler in the Philippines, and caused almost 800 black deaths in Chicago alone last year thanks to the guns and violence that naturally follow from prohibition. For as Heath Ann Thompson wrote in the Atlantic in 2014: "Without the War on Drugs, the level of gun violence that plagues so many poor inner-city neighborhoods today simply would not exist."
September 24, 2022
DARE's superstitious demonization of drugs hurts children in hospices. Yes, there are hospices that refuse to give dying children morphine to ease their pain because of the drug-warrior lie that substances like morphine are evil in and of themselves, without regard for how, why or when they are used. If DARE wants to help children, they would disband, or devote their efforts to promoting full-on honesty about ALL drugs (including alcohol and anti-depressants) -- the honesty to which America has been so firmly opposed for a variety of political and economic motivations too obvious to require mentioning here.
Author's Follow-up: February 7, 2023
And what about those signs that read DRUG FREE ZONE? Posting signs like that around schools makes as much sense as posting signs that read: SEX FREE ZONE. You're only giving kids ideas about something about which they need to make their minds up as adults. For it's not education's role to teach kids the doctrine of Mary Baker Eddy with respect to psychoactive medicine. Kids have to make up their own minds: is psychoactive medicine a blessing sent from God or is it a curse sent from the devil, as the Drug Warrior seems to think? That's a decision for educated adults to make: neither DARE nor anybody else should try to influence their decisions in grade school, of all places, nor constantly nag them on the subject and thereby put unhelpful thoughts in youngsters' heads.
Think you can handle a horse? So did Christopher Reeves. The fact is, NOBODY can handle a horse. This message brought to you by the Partnership for a Death Free America.
There's a run of addiction movies out there, like "Craving!" wherein they actually personify addiction as a screaming skeleton. Funny, drug warriors never call for a Manhattan Project to end addiction. Addiction is their golden goose.
By reading "Drug Warriors and Their Prey," I begin to understand why I encounter a wall of silence when I write to authors and professors on the subject of "drugs." The mere fact that the drug war inspires such self-censorship should be grounds for its immediate termination.
In Mexico, the same substance can be considered a "drug" or a "med," depending on where you are in the country. It's just another absurd result of the absurd policy of drug prohibition.
Both physical and psychological addiction can be successfully fought when we relegalize the pharmacopoeia and start to fight drugs with drugs. But prohibitionists do not want to end addiction, they want to scare us with it.
If MAPS wants to make progress with MDMA they should start "calling out" the FDA for judging holistic medicines by materialist standards, which means ignoring all glaringly obvious benefits.
This, by the way, is why we can't just "follow the science." The "acceptable risk" for psychoactive drugs can only be decided by the user, based on what they prioritize in life. Science just assumes that all users should want to live forever, self-fulfilled or not.
That's another problem with "following the science." Science downplays personal testimony as subjective. But psychoactive experiences are all ABOUT subjectivity. With such drugs, users are not widgets susceptible to the one-size-fits-all pills of reductionism.
When scientists refuse to report positive uses for drugs, they are not motivated by power lust, they are motivated by philosophical (non-empirical) notions about what counts as "the good life." This is why it's wrong to say that the drug war is JUST about power.
Drug use is judged by different standards than any other risky activity in the western world. One death can lead to outrage, even though that death might be statistically insignificant.
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 DARE should stop telling kids to say no: open letter to the Christian Science propaganda organization called DARE, published on June 10, 2022 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)
t's wrong to tell kids to say no to drugs. That's Christian Science. That's religious indoctrination. Why do you assume that mind medicine is evil? You surely don't think that physical medicine is evil. Some of the drugs that you tell kids to say "No" to have inspired entire religions. So stop the CHRISTIAN SCIENCE indoctrination.
And what about those signs that read DRUG FREE ZONE? Posting signs like that around schools makes as much sense as posting signs that read: SEX FREE ZONE. You're only giving kids ideas about something about which they need to make their minds up as adults. For it's not education's role to teach kids the doctrine of Mary Baker Eddy with respect to psychoactive medicine. Kids have to make up their own minds: is psychoactive medicine a blessing sent from God or is it a curse sent from the devil, as the Drug Warrior seems to think? That's a decision for educated adults to make: neither DARE nor anybody else should try to influence their decisions in grade school, of all places, nor constantly nag them on the subject and thereby put unhelpful thoughts in youngsters' heads.
You have been reading an article entitled, Why DARE should stop telling kids to say no: open letter to the Christian Science propaganda organization called DARE, published on June 10, 2022 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)