Why Scientists Should Not Judge Drugs

Homepage of the Drug War Philosopher, Brian Quass

Why Scientists Should Not Judge Drugs

an open letter to a reader

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

February 22, 2025

I share your concern about violent games for kids. Unfortunately, such games are clearly a reflection of American values these days. America just does not care much for peace, love and understanding. That's why they cracked down on the use of psychedelics in the '60s, and not (as Michael Pollan claims ¹) out of an interest in public health. Nixon and company wanted to put the flower children in jail, not to educate them about the wise use of psychoactive substances. The powers-that-be in the UK hate peace, love and understanding as well. The use of the drug Ecstasy brought UNPRECEDENTED peace, love and understanding to the dance floors of 1990s Britain. But the government missed the forest for the trees. Instead of marveling that a small, extremely safe and non-addictive tablet could bring the world together like that, they cracked down on such drug use, causing ravers to switch to anger-facilitating drugs like alcohol, after which concert organizers had to hire special forces troops to keep the peace. Special forces ². In a sane world, we would be developing protocols to use such empathogens on hotheads, to prevent them from 'shooting up' grade schools.

That's one of many reasons why I am enjoying writing essays against the Drug War and substance prohibition. It is empowering to be able to do this full time. I am also beginning to see why only the leisured and money classes dominated in the world of philosophy in the past. They were the only ones who had the time to adequately flesh out their own thoughts on important issues. If I was working ten hours a day, I could still write occasional essays, but they would necessarily be rushed and lack annotations and research. My philosophical progress would be limited simply because I would not have the time to elucidate the issues in my own mind. I would also lack the time to read and listen to the philosophers of the past in order to critique their implicit western disdain for 'altered states,' a disdain that they consider to be common sense yet which has never been shared by the indigenous people of the world. All so-called 'tribal peoples' have used psychoactive substances in various ways for the benefit of the individual and the community, in ritual and in mundane settings. All have affirmed the metaphysical reality of holistic truths suggested by the use of psychedelic medicines in particular, as pointed out by Richard Schultes, the world's first ethnobotanist, in his book 'Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers ³.'

I have given myself the task of pointing out, first, why the west has this illogical disdain for psychoactive medicines, and second, how this 'intoxiphobia ⁴' (as philosopher Russell Newcombe describes it) is the cause of needless suffering around the world. For the Drug War ideology basically amounts to this:

If a psychoactive substance can be theoretically misused by a white American young person for one reason, at one dose, in one situation, it must not be used by anyone, anywhere, at any dose, in any situation.

There are hundreds of millions of victims of this anti-scientific dictum around the world, people who suffer in silence behind closed doors, all because we outlaw obvious godsends based on selfish fears promulgated by racist demagogues. The fact is, of course, that all risky activities have victims - rock climbing, free diving, car driving, etc. - but until the subject came to drugs, that fact was never considered to be a reason for outlawing those activities. Even if 'drugs' had no benefits whatsoever, drug prohibition would be a counterproductive policy and completely at odds with the freedoms upon which Jefferson founded America, especially our right to the use of Mother Nature, which is explicit in the Natural Law from which the Founding Father took inspiration ⁵. Such prohibition, moreover, would ensure corrupt drug supply and the formation of cartels, etc. Of course, the idea that drugs have no good uses can only be maintained by those who ignore several inconvenient truths, starting with the well-established link between mood and health, to be further discussed below.

But the fact is that the kinds of drugs that we outlaw in the west have inspired entire religions. Even if we grant that their criminalization could save a white American young person from themselves, it could do so only by outsourcing the downsides of prohibition to minorities and foreigners: to minorities in the form of drive-by shootings in inner cities, and to foreigners in the form of death squads and corrupted governments. Sixty thousand Mexicans have been 'disappeared' in the last 20 years in Mexico alone thanks to the U.S.-inspired War on Drugs south of the border - a fact which almost no mainstream news outlet ever connects with American drug policy ⁶.

The media today is equally clueless about the causes of inner-city violence, even though it was drug prohibition which first armed such communities to the teeth. Prohibition created vicious drug gangs in the same way that liquor prohibition created the Mafia. And yet reporters on the beat seem baffled by the ongoing crime. 'Is it a result of joblessness?' they ask. 'How about global warming?' The Drug War is like a murdering magician: it can hide its victims in plain sight. The job of the philosopher is to awaken America from its 'dogmatic slumbers' by connecting the dots between cause and effect.

But violence is merely one of the more obvious downsides of drug prohibition (i.e., the outlawing of psychoactive medicine). There are deep philosophical problems with the Drug War ideology, problems that yet have consequences in the real world. Even Drug War opponents are unaware of these latter downsides. Why? Because they live and breathe the air of a society whose very way of thinking has brought these downsides about.

American sciences, psychology included, operate today according to the hateful doctrine of behaviorism, which tells us that human feelings do not matter except insofar as they can be quantified. If you tell a behaviorist that laughing gas cheers you up and its occasional use gives you something to look forward to, THEREBY IMPROVING YOUR OVERALL MOOD AND HEALTH, the behaviorist will just tell you, 'So you say, but I have to figure out if laughing gas can REALLY help you.' In other words, the behaviorist is on a metaphysical quest, in search of quantitative data that will 'prove' that laughing gas REALLY works for you. In still other words, the behaviorist as such is obliged to ignore common sense.

And since no one with money has the inclination to fund the 'scientific' study of laughing gas for therapeutic purposes, the FDA seeks to outlaw nitrous oxide as a 'drug,' this despite the fact that William James urged philosophers to use such substances to study the limits of human perception and the nature of ultimate reality. Readers Digest has said for 100 years that 'laughter is the best medicine,' and yet materialist doctors are bound by dogma to ignore the fact. If laughing gas is 'abused' today, it is simply because we have not provided easy ways for it to be 'used' appropriately, nor have we set any value on drug education. To the contrary, the national drug policy is all about inspiring fear about drugs, not spreading unbiased facts about the costs AND benefits of specific drug use. In a sane world, the suicidal would be given laughing-gas kits in the same way that we give epi pens to those with extreme allergies. But Americans prefer to demonize drugs rather than to use them for human benefit ⁷.

In short, laughing gas 'works!' Everybody knows it. We have learned to ignore the obvious under the idea that 'science knows best.' But it is time to question science when it cannot even decide whether laughing gas could help the depressed! That is a confusion that only eight or more years of expensive schooling could bring about.

I am the only philosopher in the world who formally complained to the FDA about their plans to regulate laughing gas as a 'drug.' I was the only philosopher who stood up for William James and for the freedom of academia, this despite the fact that I sent over a hundred personal emails to the philosophers at Oxford and Harvard in an attempt to get them to do likewise. Like most of my letters related to drug policy, those were all ignored ⁸. But then that's fine. It's even good. All the more glory for me in having carried the banner of free inquiry all by myself!

How did we get to such a pass? How is it that 'being scientific' in America now requires one to ignore the obvious when it comes to drugs: to ignore anecdote, to ignore history, and even to ignore psychological common sense?

As physicist David Bohm writes, the modern theories of relativity and quantum physics have at least one thing in common: they both tell us that reality must be judged in context and not by studying isolated parts. He points out the irony that physicists have understood this for some time now, while fields like biology and psychology do not seem to have gotten the memo. He says that this is particularly unfortunate in the latter field, wherein context and 'flow' is crucial to understanding.

'Thus we arrive at the very odd result,' writes Bohm, 'that in the study of life and mind, which are just the fields in which formative cause acting in undivided and unbroken flowing movement is most evident to experience and observation, there is now the strongest belief in the fragmentary atomistic approach to reality ⁹.'

The reductive focus of psychology has one benefit, however: it helps the field of psychology to toe the drug-war party line that outlawed substances have no known uses - for, indeed, if one ignores anecdote, history and psychological common sense, there is no 'proof' that psychoactive substances 'work,' unless one spends a great deal of time and money looking under microscopes for the proof that is staring one straight in the face.

The fact is that ANY psychoactive substance could be used as an antidepressant - at some dose, under some regimen, for certain people, in certain situations - either by itself or as part of a common-sense therapy involving numerous substances. The human mind can imagine creative protocols for treating depression with any drug or drugs that inspires and elates - at some dosage, in some cases, at certain times, for certain people. But the Drug Warrior hates specifics like these and wants us to consider only the worst-imaginable scenarios for such drug use.

This is why the Drug War is not just a collection of a few misguided laws designed to target hedonists. It represents a whole misguided way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some.

This Drug War ideology is even relevant to a discussion of physical diseases.

Immediately, when there is a suspicion of Disease A, the health professional advises Procedure B and Diet C, all based on what has worked best for patients in similar cases.

The westerner will ask, 'Well, Brian, what else can they say?'

Answer: Maybe nothing in the age of the Drug War, especially if they want to keep their jobs. But that is the whole point! For there is plenty more to say.

There is a whole world of psychoactive medicine that can improve mood - and so improve health! There is a causal connection between good attitude and good therapeutic outcomes. This linkage is even accepted by modern science, albeit grudgingly. And yet if this connection were really clear to Americans, they would be demanding the immediate re-legalization ¹⁰ of all psychoactive substances.

Opium works by a sort of psychological magic, at least when used purposefully by an educated person. As Jim Hogshire explains in 'Opium for the Masses,' the drug has no more analgesic power than mere aspirin; its strength lies in its ability to make the opium smoker view their pain differently ¹¹. Thus in the Lovecraft story 'The Crawling Chaos,' the painful pounding inside the narrator's head transforms into the painless pounding of a violent sea upon the seashore, thanks to the storyteller's ingestion of opium . The narrator is suddenly enabled to consider his pain metaphorically: he experiences it as being something outside himself, as something to be observed calmly and analytically. This, in fact, is an extraordinary gift with obvious potential uses in psychotherapy. Patients under the influence of opium could instantly assume the objective point of view with respect to their maladies. That's an ability that most psychotherapists and counselors spend decades attempting to cultivate in their patients, and then mostly in vain. Surely such mental control is a positive drug effect, not a negative one. Opium smokers can instantly become that fabled mystic on the mountaintop who, after long decades of practice, has become insensible to pain and irritation by dint of sheer creative mental power. This enormous gift from opium ¹² , however, is just one of the endless drug-inspired benefits that we are told that we must forego - nay, that we must not even imagine -- in fealty to the Drug War ideology of substance demonization and the inhumane doctrine of behaviorism.

To quote Poe from 'Ligeia':

'Who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its vigor?'

Answer: Nobody. And we will NOT know until America rejects both substance prohibition and the inhuman ideology of behaviorism.

And yet the materialist healthcare system discounts this power entirely, and declares that there are inevitable negative outcomes to specific physical diseases unless one follows what has been proven scientifically to work.

Miracles happen, however, and they are all due to attitude, whether that attitude is ascribed to the sufferer's religion or merely to their bull-headedness.

The fact is, we cannot talk advisedly about the limits of the power of the human mind until we once again give it the freedom to use psychoactive medicines. Only then will we know what the mind can and cannot accomplish with respect to keeping illness at bay. This will require a wide variety of quixotic individual experiments based on a wide variety of unique variables -- in a world in which context always matters and the whole is greater than the parts. It will be an ongoing project, with results being shared freely and even lovingly, in an effort to promote safe and beneficial drug use for all, while teaching how to avoid unwanted chemical dependency and how to renounce it effectively over time if it were to develop -- how to renounce it without the gnashing of teeth which we moderns think is a natural requisite on such occasions. Until we are free to use the common-sense expediency of 'fighting drugs with drugs,' we will not know whether the kicking of a given dependency or addiction requires immense suffering, or whether that suffering is just an artefact of drug laws which essentially force modern rehab to mean 'going cold turkey.' In the common-sense world, the withdrawing individual could use a variety of strategically chosen, non-addictive drugs, drugs that can inspire and elate and which work via different biochemical pathways than those of the unwanted substance. It is common sense that such assistance will help keep the withdrawing individual on track for renouncing a problematic substance for good - not a substance that is problematic in itself, remember, but rather one which has proven problematic for a specific individual ¹³.

And yet the medical institution is stuck on materialist approaches that totally ignore the power of mind. And when they find a drug that promotes a positive mental attitude, they pick it apart wearing the blinders of reductive materialism ¹⁴, looking for the specific way in which the drug helps with a specific condition. They are dogmatically incapable of judging the drug holistically. This is why they should not be involved in judging drugs at all. The proof of psychoactive medicine is in its glaringly obvious power to elate and inspire. We do not need a scientist to come along and tell us it is not 'really' working. We do not need to establish 'proof' for every single condition, that the drug is working in some direct way for that specific condition. That is not how holistic medicines work. A drug like psilocybin cheers one up overall... AND THEREFORE HELPS WITH SPECIFIC THINGS LIKE DIABETES. There need be no 'diabetes pathway' or 'stomach pathway' or 'depression pathway' in the brain to show that such drugs work for diabetes or for stomach aches or for depression. Holistic drugs need not live up to our reductionist expectations.

That's why it is depressing to read the accounts of scientists trying to figure out if psilocybin can help for things like diabetes. They are picking the drug apart like tenured scavengers, trying to find what's so special about it, in complete denial of the obvious, but rather in search for physical causes and effects which will let them see the wonder through the eyes of a physicist, as who should say, 'Nothing to see here. A just causes B which causes C which causes D.' And so the search is always on for a specific biochemical way that a time-honored substance like psilocybin is improving things with respect to one particular illness at a time. It is imperialist science, imposing western reductionist criteria on drugs whose whole benefit consists in the holistic nature of their effects! The result is that progress is glacial for drug approval. Sufferers have to sit back and wait until their particular condition is finally studied by psilocybin researchers - and those who wish spiritual revelation will have to wait the longest. Because the materialist's unspoken goal is to prove that such substances are 'nothing but' things that the scientist can understand and point to. The fact that drugs can work indirectly, holistically, is foreign to them, even though it makes perfect psychological common sense that a good attitude, drug-inspired or not, can help one keep disease at bay and/or lessen its severity.

But then it was a category error to place scientists in charge of mind and mood medicine to begin with. The drug-using individual is the expert on their own mental states. To paraphrase Pascal, 'The mind has its own reasons, which materialist science does not know.' If help is needed, then the user should be turning to what I call 'pharmacologically savvy empaths' - empathic individuals with a wide-ranging understanding of the effects of a wide variety of psychoactive substances and a knowledge of how to use them safely, by themselves or in combination, as part of an overall protocol to achieve the psychosocial goals of the users, not the goals of the empath. This is a practice that would unite the safety interests of western medicine with the holistic knowhow of the indigenous world ¹⁵.

This is why the end of the Drug War requires a change in the American attitude toward life. We need an holistic outlook, one in which peace and love matter and wholeness is paramount instead of fragmentation. Unfortunately, for now, the world seems to be moving further from such a world than closer. Perhaps the most realistic goal we can shoot for at this time is to get the United States government to graciously accede to the requests of other countries to view drugs differently, according to holistic principles and psychological common sense. If the U.S. cannot wrap its collective head around the fact that drugs have tremendous positive uses, perhaps they can be inspired with just enough humility and self-doubt to convince themselves to let another country try another approach to drugs, one in which ignorance and racism are the evils, not drugs. For now, however, the U.S. is in such denial about their own pathological approach to psychoactive substances that they insist that the entire world follow suit on pain of economic reprisal. Sadly, less arm twisting seems to be required for that purpose than one might have imagined. Authoritarian leaders see the Drug War as just another way to crack down on undesirables. Besides, if the Drug War is supported by America, the most ostensibly free country in the world, why should less freedom-oriented nations do otherwise?

In short, the evils of the Drug War are just too big to be seen. In addition to the downsides mentioned above, the Drug War has destroyed the fourth amendment of the U.S. Constitution through indiscriminate drug testing ¹⁶ and outlawed the freedom of religion ¹⁷, with our courts almost always denying the legitimacy of any faith that uses psychoactive sacraments. The Drug War even played a decisive role in ending American democracy by throwing millions of minorities in jail and so handing election victories to Drug Warriors, culminating with the victory of the Fearmonger in Chief in November 2024. For the Drug War is all about fearmongering, and fearmongering has always been the political M.O. of the Blamer in Chief in Washington, D.C.

Materialism

Pharmacologically Savvy Empaths

Notes for essay entitled Why Scientists Should Not Judge Drugs: an open letter to a reader:

1: The Problem with Michael Pollan DWP (up)
2: How the Drug War killed Leah Betts DWP (up)
3: Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers Schultes, Richard, 1979 (up)
4: Intoxiphobia DWP (up)
5: Jefferson DWP (up)
6: Jefferson DWP (up)
7: Forbes Magazine's Laughable Article about Nitrous Oxide DWP (up)
8: I asked 100 American philosophers what they thought about the Drug War DWP (up)
9: Wholeness and the Implicate Order Bohm, David, 1980 (up)
10: “National Coalition for Drug Legalization.” n.d. National Coalition for Drug Legalization. https://www.nationalcoalitionfordruglegalization.org/. (up)
11: Opium for the Masses: Harvesting Nature’s Best Pain Medication Hogshire, Jim (up)
12: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)
13: Fighting Drugs with Drugs DWP (up)
14: How materialists lend a veneer of science to the lies of the drug warriors DWP (up)
15: Replacing Psychiatry with Pharmacologically Savvy Shamanism DWP (up)
16: Drug Testing and the Christian Science Inquisition DWP (up)
17: Freedom of Religion and the War on Drugs DWP (up)

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against the hateful war on US

The drug war is a meta-injustice. It does not just limit what you're allowed to think, it limits how and how much you are allowed to think.

Cop and detective shows are loaded with subtle drug war propaganda, including lines like, "She had a history of drug use, so..." The implication being that anyone who uses substances that politicians hate cannot be trusted.

If we let "science" decide about drugs, i.e. base freedom on health concerns, then tea can be as easily outlawed as beer. The fact that horses are not illegal shows that prohibition is not about health. It's about the power to outlaw certain "ways of being in the world."

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

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

Q: Why are we never told about the potential benefits of drugs? A: Follow the money.

Today's Washington Post reports that "opioid pills shipped" DROPPED 45% between 2011 and 2019..... while fatal overdoses ROSE TO RECORD LEVELS! Prohibition is PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE.

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

Every time I see a psychiatrist, I feel like I'm playing a game of make-believe. We're both pretending that hundreds of demonized medicines do not exist and could be of no use whatsoever.

The press is having a field day with the Matthew Perry story. They love to have a nice occasion to demonize drugs. I wonder how many decades must pass before they realize that people are killed by ignorance and a corrupted drug supply, not by the drugs themselves.

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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 Scientists Should Not Judge Drugs

an open letter to a reader

Materialism

Pharmacologically Savvy Empaths

Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

Break the ice with a sledgehammer: place this book on your coffee table.

Diary of a Drug Fiend