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Why is the World Health Organization still promoting a drugs policy that has already killed hundreds of thousands of people in the 21st century alone?

How many more deaths before drug warriors stop trying to protect us from a leaf?

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher (Substack version)

September 9, 2026



If the WHO really wanted to improve public health, they would shutter their business, at least as far as psychoactive substances are concerned. We do not need an international organization that was designed to normalize repressive drug policies by focusing only on the downsides of psychoactive substances. Indeed, the very existence of WHO is a disgrace, insofar as it implies that we need an international overseer to decide for us as individuals whether we should use substances that can improve our minds, improve our appreciation of music, improve our appreciation of Mother Nature, and even motivate us to create a whole new religion. It is not the job of medical "experts" to make such decisions for us, no matter how many academic letters they may append beside their name, as who should say, "My ideas count more than yours do!" If there are risks of use in any given case, these experts should tell us so and then butt out, for that is where their expertise comes to an end. They have no expertise whatsoever in deciding whether use of a given drug makes sense for any given person given the abstract risks that they have discovered. To say otherwise is to suggest that the Rishi of the Punjab in 1500 BC should have received the approval of materialist doctors before founding a religion based on the insights provided by the consumption of the psychoactive Soma juice. To say otherwise is to suggest that the creation of the Vedic religion, and hence Hinduism itself, should have been subject to the veto power of materialist doctors. Had such vetting actually transpired, there would be no Hindu religion today, insofar as Drug Warriors think that the existence of one potential downside of use qualifies a substance for criminalization, this despite the fact that every substance in the world has downsides when used in some context, at some dose, for some reason.

I recently checked the WHO website, by the way.1 I wanted to verify that the WHO is indeed still committed to the sorts of absurd policies suggested above before I raked them over the coals on that account. Well, I need not have bothered. One glance at their April 2026 update on drug policy showed that they are still doing business as usual, blaming drugs outside of all context while COMPLETELY IGNORING all positive uses for drugs. That's right, they completely ignore all drug benefits. It is a matter of faith with these people that drugs, as it were by definition, can have no positive uses for anybody, anywhere, ever (with a rare footnoted exception for a few recognized religious and ethnic groups). They only look at drugs as a problem, which, of course, biases them enormously on the whole subject. One can only see what one is looking for, after all. Of course, this belief about the evil of drugs places the WHO in what must be an awkward position for them at times. As an agency of the United Nations, they are supposed to cherish cultural differences and protect the rights of the indigenous. How then do they handle the fact that Peruvian descendants of the Inca continue to this very day to chew the coca leaf daily in such a manner as to extract therefrom the alkaloids about which the WHO is having such an enormously counterproductive conniption fit? Pity the WHO bureaucrat, torn between two worlds, like an ideologically tormented Jekyll & Hyde, now demonizing the coca leaf as a killer, now praising it as a cultural icon. One can hear the anguished pen pusher now as they stare in the restroom mirror during a coffee break in their Midtown Manhattan high-rise: "Bless you native users in the highlands of Peru... and yet death to you users everywhere else! Do you hear me? Absolute death!" Ah, yes. They must long for the good old days of just a few decades ago, when they could safely demonize the use of the leaf across the board. Well, get used to it, bureaucrats. If I have my way, someday you'll be doffing your hats to the needs of the chronically depressed as well. It's not just the Quechua people of Peru who have valid reasons for using the coca leaf, after all. I'm over here, folks: you can't miss me. I'm the chronically depressed elephant in the room!

Here's how the agency attempts to walk this tightrope of contradictory priorities, as revealed in the 2026 update mentioned above.

They tell us that "retaining coca leaf in Schedule I of the 1961 Convention remains necessary to reduce the risks associated with illicit cocaine production, while still allowing countries to maintain culturally protected traditional uses within national legal frameworks."2 They thus try to carve out exceptions for groups that they refuse to apply to individuals, and this is an absurd standard. If I think the Peruvian people have a productive usage pattern, why am I, as a human being, not allowed to adopt it? Apparently, because I do not have the correct genetic makeup to earn me that privilege. I do not have Incan blood. In other words, drug prohibition is racist through and through. And this ad hoc roadblock for would-be users sounds familiar. It's all of a piece with the mindset of American courts when they tell us that people like myself cannot use peyote because my racial group has no history of using such substances for religious purposes. Such harebrained opinions show how drug-hating westerners can basically "make it up as they go along" when it comes to suppressing drug use; they can bid defiance to all principles, logic and common sense, knowing that they will get their way on the subject given the drug-hating fanaticism of the age in which they live. By that latter logic, however, we as Americans should never have begun proselytizing on behalf of the Christian religion among those whose forebears had no knowledge of the Christian faith to begin with. But then the reason given for prohibition of the coca leaf is absurd when considered from a secular standpoint as well. If we must outlaw a leaf because it can be used to create cocaine, then we may as well outlaw maples, ashes and birch trees. Such flora can be used to create baseball bats for the purpose of whacking DEA agents on the head when they storm into one's home in an effort to keep one from using substances to improve one's mind and mood. This may sound like an exaggeration, but it highlights the direction in which prohibition is taking the west: toward a world in which we are simply not allowed to take any risks whatsoever, either with ourselves or with others. Aleister Crowley satirized the propensity of his post-war generation as follows for prioritizing abstract safety over all other considerations on earth:

While eating and breathing and going about are permitted, we shall never be a really righteous race. 3
Aleister Crowley, The Diary of a Drug Fiend

But I have yet to mention the most hypocritical part of the WHO mindset on drugs. The rationale behind the organization's busybody interference in the "Rights of Man" seems to be the supposed need to fight the problem of drug dependence. Now, how is that for a laugh? Do they not realize that the business model of modern pharmaceutical companies is to cause drug dependency when it comes to the psychiatric medicines that they sell?4 The proof is extant. It is seen in the fact that 1 in 4 American women are dependent upon a psychiatric medicine for life. 5 And make no mistake, this is the result of drug prohibition, albeit one that the WHO will never list as a downside of that deadly policy. It was drug prohibition which gave Big Pharma a monopoly on providing mind and mood medicine in the first place. Drug prohibition also incentivized psychiatrists to play along with this injustice. Doctors realized that by doing so they would have patients for life. How's that for a temptation? This is why no one in the mainstream is objecting to the fact that folks like myself have to see a doctor 1/3rd their age every three months of their life to receive a refill on an underperforming and expensive 'med.' This is why no one is protesting about the fact that I have been completely disempowered by the healthcare system. Nobody. But then why should they? The status quo is paying for entire houses and entire educations for those on the profitable side of this injustice: the fact that it has turned me into a child for life is just so much dust that must be swept under the carpet of polite conversation in America. And yet this is what the WHO holds against those evil rotten drugs of theirs, the fact that they may cause dependence?

Pardon me for a moment while I poke my head out of the window and scream at the top of my lungs. This won't take a second.

I have so far explained how the WHO ignores both the downsides of drug prohibition and the upsides of drug use, i.e., the fact that drugs can have benefits. The real problem, however, is that this twofold shortcoming is present in the mainstream world as well. Nobody seems to recognize either the downsides of drug prohibition or the upsides of drug use. Those nonprofit groups fighting against gun violence in inner cities never mention the fact that drug prohibition brought guns to the streets in the first place; those nonprofit groups that are fighting to end shock therapy never mention the fact that drug prohibition outlaws drugs that would make shock therapy unnecessary (assuming that it is ever necessary to begin with, of course); and those ethicists discussing assisted suicide for the depressed never mention the fact that drug prohibition has outlawed all drugs that could help make a suicidal person wish to live. Drug prohibition is simply never held accountable in polite society.

Let me give two specific examples of how the mainstream has been bamboozled on the subject of drugs. In its page on "Drug Policy Reform," Amnesty International devotes just one sentence to drug benefits: 6

[Drug policies] obstruct access to drugs for medical purposes, including for pain relief and palliative care, resulting in further harm and suffering for millions of patients. 7
Drug Policy Reform

That's one sentence out of 3,500-plus words. After reading the article, you could be forgiven for concluding that drugs are basically only used by hedonists, with the occasional exception of a pain patient or two. Nothing is said about the fact that drug prohibition caused an epidemic of depression in western society by outlawing all substances that can inspire and elate. Nothing is said about the power of drugs to inspire religions. Nothing is said about the fact that drug prohibition has shunted users off onto Big Pharma meds that are harder to kick than heroin. Nothing is said about how drug prohibition has outlawed the continuation of the research that William James had undertaken with regard to different forms of consciousness.

The ACLU page on drug prohibition has its own issues, first and foremost the fact that it does not seem to have been updated since 1995, over 30 years ago! But it is the apologetic air of the piece with which I take issue.

Drugs Are Here to Stay -- Let's Reduce Their Harm 8
Against Drug Prohibition

The ACLU is arguing on the backfoot. They are accepting the Drug Warrior's premise that drugs are harmful; they are merely suggesting that we help the endangered user rather than arresting them. But if we're going to make vast generalizations about a wide range of disparate substances known as drugs, we could with equal justice insist that drugs are beneficial, and that those who outlaw them a priori are standing in the way of pharmacological progress, to say nothing of the philosophical, religious and therapeutic use that they are preventing in the here and now. In other words, the blurb above could have just as easily read: "Drugs are here to stay -- Let's maximize their benefits!" The re-legalization advocate is always feeling pressure to address drug harms; we should change the narrative and demand that prohibitionists be held to account for their a priori denial of drug benefits. By the way, the fact that we would ever doubt that "drugs are here to stay" shows how isolated Americans have become in their well-paved communities with lawns and cable TV boxes. No denizen of the rainforest would doubt that "drugs are here to stay," unless, of course, their homeland was in danger of being bulldozed by drug-hating westerners?

In conclusion, let's take a closer look at the justification that the WHO gives for keeping the coca leaf on Schedule I. They tell us that this is necessary in order to, quote, "reduce the risks associated with illicit cocaine production."

What? "Reduce the risks associated with illicit cocaine production?" Pardon me while I poke my head out of the window and scream again.

The WHO wants to reduce risks? Really? Then why are they supporting a prohibition policy that creates drug cartels out of whole cloth, turns inner cities into shooting galleries, and forces opiate users to use unidentified product at unknown doses?

Wouldn't it break a heart of stone?

Apparently not, insofar as the tickers of the Drug Warriors seem totally unaffected by the carnage that they are wreaking around the world. To the contrary, these Drug Warriors are demanding "more of the same" as the WHO update makes clear: more cartels, more drive-by shootings, and more totally unnecessary opiate deaths on city streets. And the WHO is all too happy to oblige. When America says "hate drugs," the WHO asks "How much?" Their job when it comes to psychoactive substances is not to keep the world healthy, their job is to normalize the drug-hating superstitions of the west.


RELATED LINKS











Notes for essay entitled Why is the World Health Organization still promoting a drugs policy that has already killed hundreds of thousands of people in the 21st century alone?: How many more deaths before drug warriors stop trying to protect us from a leaf?:

1: World Health Organization. 2026. “UN Drug Policy Body Acts on WHO Recommendations to Control New Psychoactive Substances and Considers Coca Leaf Review.” Who.Int. World Health Organization: WHO. April 23, 2026. https://www.who.int/news/item/23-04-2026-un- (up)
2: World Health Organization. 2026. “UN Drug Policy Body Acts on WHO Recommendations to Control New Psychoactive Substances and Considers Coca Leaf Review.” Who.Int. World Health Organization: WHO. April 23, 2026. https://www.who.int/news/item/23-04-2026-un- (up)
3: Arthur Crowley. “Full Text of ‘the Diary of a Drug Fiend.’” 1922. Archive.org. 2017. https://archive.org/stream/b29826433/b29826433_djvu.txt. (up)
4: Snook, Ann. 2019. “Pharmaceutical Fraud: What Are Kickback Schemes?.” Caseiq.Com. Case IQ. May 15, 2019. https://www.caseiq.com/resources/articles/pharmaceutical-fraud-what-are-kickback-schemes. (up)
5: Richard Louis Miller. 2017. Psychedelic Medicine : The Healing Powers of LSD, MDMA, Psilocybin, and Ayahuasca. Rochester, Vermont: Park Street Press. (up)
6: Amnesty International. 2024. “Drug Policy Reform.” Amnesty International. 2024. https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/drug-policy-reform/. (up)
7: Amnesty International. 2024. “Drug Policy Reform.” Amnesty International. 2024. https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/drug-policy-reform/. (up)
8: ACLU. 1995. “Against Drug Prohibition.” American Civil Liberties Union. January 6, 1995. https://www.aclu.org/documents/against-drug-prohibition. (up)
9: Okafor, David. 2026. “War On Drugs Statistics.” WifiTalents. February 12, 2026. https://wifitalents.com/war-on-drugs-statistics/. (up)
10: ACLU. 1995. “Against Drug Prohibition.” American Civil Liberties Union. January 6, 1995. https://www.aclu.org/documents/against-drug-prohibition. (up)
11: Amnesty International. 2024. “Drug Policy Reform.” Amnesty International. 2024. https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/drug-policy-reform/. (up)
12: “Website Filtered.” 2026. Filtermag.Org. 2026. https://filtermag.org/overdose-prohibition-related-deaths/. (up)




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Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




"Now, now, Sherlock, that coca preparation is not helping you a jot. Why can't you get 'high on sunshine,' like good old Watson here?" To which Sherlock replies: "But my good fellow, then I would no longer BE Sherlock Holmes."

"My faith votes and strives to outlaw religions that use substances of which politicians disapprove."

In a free world, almost all depressed individuals could do WITHOUT doctors: these adult human beings could handle their own depression with the informed intermittent use of a wide variety of psychoactive substances.

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.

If there was free speech in America, we would see billboards demanding freedom to use psychoactive substances for religious purposes, or to heal, or to follow-up on the research of William James regarding the nature of human consciousness.

Someone should stand outside Jefferson's estate and hand out leaflets describing the DEA's 1987 raid on Monticello to confiscate poppy plants. That raid was against everything Jefferson stood for. The TJ Foundation DISHONORED JEFFERSON and their visitors should know that!

Today's war against drug users is like Elizabeth I's war against Catholics. Both are religious crackdowns. For today's oppressors, the true faith (i.e., the moral way to live) is according to the drug-hating religion of Christian Science.

We might as well fight for justice for Christopher Reeves: he was killed because someone was peddling that junk that we call horses. The question is: who sold Christopher that horse?! Who encouraged him to ride it?!

The term "hard" is just our modern term for the kinds of drugs that doctors of yore used to call panaceas

Americans were always free to take care of their own health -- until drug warriors handed doctors a monopoly on providing mind and mood medicine.


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