Why Drug Free Zones are Dangerous and Unconstitutional
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
August 1, 2022
he use of "Drug Free" signs around schools represents the establishment of a religion, since the idea that one should "say no to drugs" is merely the highly debatable premise upon which Mary Baker Eddy founded the religion that she called Christian Science. Worse yet, the concept that one should be "drug free" is unscientific. Should one be "free" of antibiotics or aspirin? Should one be free of coffee and chocolate? We certainly don't think Americans should be free of antidepressants considering that one-in-four of our women are addicted to them and mainstream America does not even notice the fact. Why then should they be free of psychoactive medicines from Mother Nature, especially when such medicines have been used responsibly by other cultures since caveman days, sometimes inspiring the creation of entire new religions. Should we teach students to say no to medicines merely because they have been demonized by American politicians?
Moreover, placing "Drug Free Zone" signs around schools is like surrounding schools with "Prostitution Free Zone" signs. It is just as likely to give students ideas as it is to prevent them from misusing substances. In fact, studies show that drug use increases to the extent that schools remind students of "drugs" through anti-drug campaigns. To surround schools with "drug free zone" signs is like surrounding schools with signs that read: "Whatever you do, don't use your skateboard in the following dangerous locations that you've never heard of before until now..." and then listing the most exciting but dangerous locations in which to use a skateboard.
If we were really worried about our kids, we'd talk to them calmly and honestly about all substances (including coffee, alcohol and Big Pharma antidepressants), citing both their positive and negative uses and reminding students of the need to make their own decisions on political and religious topics. We wouldn't surround them with political messages determined to turn them into hypocritical Christian Scientists, who "just say no" to a politically defined roster of superstitiously hyped mega-enemies that unscientific America demonizes with the pejorative appellation of "drugs."
Drug Free Zones encourage kids to think they should fear medicine rather than understand it. It signals a jaundiced Christian Science view toward plant medicine. It is Christian Science indoctrination.
Author's Follow-up: September 29, 2022
Paul Stamets ate some psilocybin mushrooms in his youth and it allowed him to focus his mind in such a way that he stopped stuttering IN ONE DAY and, for the first time in his young life, could look girls straight in the eye. The psychedelic botanical(s) known as "soma" inspired the Vedic-Hindu religion. Mushrooms were godlike for the Mayans and the Inca considered coca to be divine. Given this back story, "drug free" zones are Christian Science propaganda, designed to scare kids away from using anything but alcohol, tobacco, and, oh yes, those Big Pharma drugs upon which 1 in 4 American women are dependent.
Author's Follow-up: August 19, 2023
Also: America's foremost philosopher, William James, said we should study altered states, for they suggest that we see only a small part of reality with our limited senses. To say therefore that places of education are "drug free zones" is to say that their academic pursuits are censored by government. It is nothing to be proud of. Take the signs down and let's make America free again.
Author's Follow-up: January 3, 2024
Drug Awareness courses do just that: they make young kids aware of drugs. Why would you do that if you had no intentions of teaching safe use? Philip Jenkins has shown in "Synthetic Panics" that drug problems spread like wildfire precisely because of publicity given supposedly problematic use by the DEA and other drug agencies. The agencies know this and approve. They need an ongoing drug problem in order to justify their shamefully enormous budgets. It's a scam dedicated to the existence of an endless problem: first with PCP, then Ice, then crack cocaine, then Oxy, then fentanyl, you name it. Of course, for all this seeming concern about safety, the Drug Warrior has no problems with guns that kill 50,000-plus people every year. They are more worried about drugs that kill no one -- or else do so only thanks to the problems created by prohibition -- including contaminated supply and the dogmatic refusal to teach safe use -- and to even punish those who do so. See my letter to the Vancouver Police.
Author's Follow-up: January 30, 2024
"Drug Free Zones" are indoctrinating our kids in the anti-scientific ideology of the Drug War, which tells us (falsely) that drugs can be voted "up" or "down" -- it tells us that if a drug can be misused in one way, then it must not be used in any way, by anyone, anywhere, ever. This is the superstitious point of view that has censored science and kept endless godsend treatments from even being contemplated by our healthcare professionals. Thanks to this racist, xenophobic and politically motivated dogma, we are living in the Dark Ages of healthcare, one in which we prefer that young people commit suicide rather than use the substances that tribal peoples have always used, many of which grow at our very feet.
How would we even KNOW that outlawed drugs have no positive uses? We first have to incorporate them in a sane, empathic and creative way to find that out, and the drug war makes such a sensible approach absolutely impossible.
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.
Almost all talk about the supposed intractability of things like addiction are exercises in make-believe. The pundits pretend that godsend medicines do not exist, thus normalizing prohibition by implying that it does not limit progress. It's a tacit form of collaboration.
It's "convenient" for scientists that their "REAL" cures happen to be the ones that racist politicians will allow. Scientists thus normalize prohibition by pretending that outlawed substances have no therapeutic value. It's materialism collaborating with the drug war.
The FDA is not qualified to tell us whether holistic medicines work. They hold such drugs to materialist standards and that's pharmacological colonialism.
Mariani Wine is the real McCoy, with Bolivian coca leaves (tho' not with cocaine, as Wikipedia says). I'll be writing more about my experience with it soon. I was impressed. It's the same drink "on which" HG Wells and Jules Verne wrote their stories.
High suicide rates? What a poser! Gee, I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that the US has outlawed all substances that elate and inspire???
Attention People's magazine editorial staff:
Matthew Perry was a big boy who made his own decisions. He didn't die because of ketamine or because of evil rotten drug dealers, he died because of America's enforced ignorance about psychoactive drugs.
Drug warriors abuse the English language.
The December Scientific American features a story called "The New Nuclear Age," about a trillion-dollar plan to add 100s of ICBM's to 5 states, which an SA editorial calls "kick me" signs. This Neanderthal plan comes from pols who think that compassion-boosting drugs are evil!
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 Drug Free Zones are Dangerous and Unconstitutional published on August 1, 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)