Why science is a joke in the age of the drug war

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Why science is a joke in the age of the drug war

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

June 11, 2024

The field of psychology today is a joke insofar as it ignores common sense in order to toe the Drug War party line that "drugs" can have no positive uses whatsoever. Of course, this position is never stated explicitly by modern psychologists, but it is implicit in their lack of interest in demonized drugs, except in papers that focus exclusively on the presumed pathology behind their use ¹.

This indifference may seem to be changing today, as academia begins to wrap its collective head around the fact that entheogens ² like psilocybin ³ and MDMA ⁴ ⁵ do, indeed, seem to help people cope with life and to see themselves more objectively, etc. Yet there is a basic idiocy in modern psychology that remains thanks to the stubbornness of materialist doctrine, which refuses to recognize psychological common sense in considering the potential use of a wide variety of drugs, and not just the psychedelics that are now stealing the show when it comes to psychological healing on the national stage. For the simple truth is that any drug that makes a person feel good and/or increases brain function can have a positive effect in therapy for the confused and the depressed, for the once-obvious reason that people enjoy both feeling good and looking forward to feeling good. Hence it follows that the wisely scheduled use of mood-elevating drugs can create a virtuous circle in which the user is empowered to successfully pursue their goals in life (as opposed to the goals of society and/or their therapist).

Nor does this "use" need to be addictive, except in the fretful mind of the Drug Warrior, who falsely tells us that any "feel good" drug will be addictive. This is not true, of course, and least of all for the category of drugs known as entheogens, for which "cravings," at least in the pejorative sense of that term, are virtually unknown. Moreover, in a world without the Drug War, the variety of "feel good" drugs available would skyrocket, making it easy to produce a virtuous psychological circle without establishing physical dependency. (See, in particular, the hundreds of inspirational phenethylamines synthesized by Alexander Shulgin.⁶) Finally, it used to be common sense that the use of ANY drug is preferable to suicide. If this is so (and it surely is), then it is wrong even to deny opium and cocaine to the suffering, if that is the only thing that "works" for them (again, according to the USER's definition of that term).

I am picking on psychology here, but it is our entire society that is blind to the value of drugs. Science in general is blind. That's why magazines like Science News continue to plump for shock therapy for the depressed ⁷. They refuse to even acknowledge the existence of outlawed drugs and so feel no need to consider how they might work in making shock therapy unnecessary. They are 100% behind technical manipulation of the human brain, but they refuse to even talk about using the plant medicines that grow at our very feet. As mentioned above, this is beginning to change when it comes to entheogens, but the simple fact that coca and opium could be helpful to the suffering is beyond the brainwashed imaginations of scientists at this point and the editors who publish their work. They have all been told since grade school that it is their patriotic duty to be hysterical about drugs rather than to find good uses for them.

This is probably a good place to remind the brainwashed scientists why they are wrong on this topic even on their own scientific terms. For the Drug War is based on the following anti-scientific lie:

That a drug that can be misused by white teenagers at one dose in one situation must not be used by anybody in the world at any dose in any situation.

That attitude is not simply anti-scientific, but it is selfish and inhumane as well.

So while prohibitionists like Bill Clinton are patting themselves on the back for supposedly saving their irresponsible brothers from addiction, they should be apologizing to the hospice kids in India for insisting that they suffer unnecessarily. Speaking of which, it is depressing that a Rhodes Scholar like the former president believes that it is best to lie to Americans about drugs and that the human mind can never learn to use such substances wisely ⁸. It goes a long way toward quelling my IQ envy, when I see folks who should know better espousing such anti-intellectual and obscurantist policies. This is what happens, though, when you ignore common sense: like the fact that it is wrong on so many levels to outlaw the godsends of Mother Nature - and that all perceived "benefits" from doing so are sure to be paid for in blood and suffering, even if it be by strangers in inner cities or overseas.

P.S.

When I write essays like the above, I am always asking myself how a brainwashed reader might react. In this case, I envision them saying: "Yes, that's all well and good, but legalization ⁹ would lead to anarchy."

My response: Assuming that you are correct, why is this so? I will tell you why. It's because Americans have been taught to scream and holler about drugs. The media believes it is their job to parley any negative drug event into a lurid narrative against drugs. The natural result of this attitude is that we are always being reminded of the lie that drugs are inherently evil. It's as if the media were focusing on the lurid details of car crashes with the goal of getting cars outlawed.

The result: we only see the evil side of drug use, so we crack down some more, creating more bad outcomes for the media and politicians to exploit in lurid detail, and so the beat goes on: the deadly Drug War continues, causing civil wars overseas and leaving inner cities in bullet-riddled shambles ¹⁰.

Frankly, people need to just plain shut the heck up about drugs. It should be illegal, in fact, to blame drugs for anything, since it is social policy and laws like prohibition that make drugs dangerous, not drugs themselves. No drug is dangerous in and of itself. Not PCP ¹¹, not ICE, not crack cocaine ¹² ¹³ , not Fentanyl ¹⁴. Even cyanide has positive uses ¹⁵. To blame drugs for negative outcomes is simply a modern superstition. Americans love to arrange their world in such a way that there is one cause, one single "whipping boy," for all their problems. But the world is far more complicated than that and when you think otherwise, you end up with laws that make things far worse.

In 1913, Americans used opium ¹⁶ peaceably in their homes; in 1915, they were suddenly turned into addicts. The drug did not change, only the laws.

Notes for essay entitled Why science is a joke in the age of the drug war:

1: How psychologists gaslight us about beneficial drug use DWP (up)
2: Entheogen defined Erowid (up)
3: Scribd.com: Psilocybin: a trip into the world of Magic Mushrooms Griffiths, William, William Griffiths, Annapolis, 2021 (up)
4: How the Drug War killed Leah Betts DWP (up)
5: Listening to Ecstasy: The Transformative Power of MDMA Wininger, Charles, 2021 (up)
6: Shulgin, Alexander T, and Ann Shulgin. 2019. Pihkal : A Chemical Love Story. Berkeley, Ca: Transform Press. (up)
7: Science News Unveils Shock Therapy II DWP (up)
8: Recognizing, of course, that Trump has managed the seemingly impossible by being far worse than Clinton (or even Biden, for that matter) when it comes to drug policy. (up)
9: “National Coalition for Drug Legalization.” n.d. National Coalition for Drug Legalization. https://www.nationalcoalitionfordruglegalization.org/. (up)
10: “Synthetic Panics: The Symbolic Politics of Designer Drugs | Office of Justice Programs.” 2024. Ojp.Gov. 2024. https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/synthetic-panics-symbolic-politics-designer-drugs. (up)
11: Kirkpatrick, Jonathan. 2023. “Filter.” Filter. October 10, 2023. https://filtermag.org/pcp-meth-news-media/. (up)
12: Sigmund Freud's real breakthrough was not psychoanalysis DWP (up)
13: “Freud on Cocaine : Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” 2023. Internet Archive. 2023. https://archive.org/details/freudoncocaine0000freu/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater. (up)
14: Drug Use for Grownups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear Hart, Carl (up)
15: Cyanide ingredient could lead to new type 2 diabetes treatment Uncredited, diabetes.co.uk, 2016 (up)
16: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)

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The line drawn between recreational and medical use is wishful thinking on the part of drug warriors. Recreation, according to Webster's, is "refreshment or diversion," and both have positive knock-on effects in the lives of real people.

Countless millions suffer needlessly in silence because of America's fearmongering about drugs.

"They have called thee Soma-lover: here is the pressed juice. Drink thereof for rapture." -Rig Veda (There would be no Hindu religion today had the drug war been in effect in the Punjab 3,500 years ago.)

The Thomas Jefferson Foundation is a drug war collaborator. They helped the DEA confiscate Thomas Jefferson's poppy plants in 1987.

Saying "Fentanyl kills" is philosophically equivalent to saying "Fire bad!" Both statements are attempts to make us fear dangerous substances rather than to learn how to use them as safely as possible for human benefit.

We need a scheduling system for psychoactive drugs as much as we need a scheduling system for sports activities: i.e. NOT AT ALL. Some sports are VERY dangerous, but we do not outlaw them because we know that there are benefits both to sports and to freedom in general.

Freud's real discovery was that drugs like cocaine could make psychiatry UNNECESSARY for the vast majority of people. The medical establishment hated the idea -- so they judged the drug based on its worst possible use!

Even fans of sacred medicine have been brainwashed to believe that we do not know if such drugs "really" work: they want microscopic proof. But that's a western bias, used strategically by drug warriors to make the psychotropic drug approval process as glacial as possible.

The best step we could take in harm reduction is re-legalizing everything and starting to teach safe use. Spend the DEA's billions on "go" teams that would descend on locations where drugs are being used stupidly -- not to arrest, but to educate.

Americans think that fighting drugs is more important than freedom. We have already given up on the fourth amendment. Nor is the right to religion honored for those who believe in indigenous medicines. Pols are now trying to end free speech about drugs as well.

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Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.

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Why science is a joke in the age of the drug war

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