Why the Drug War is the Great Philosophical Problem of Our Time
my application for joining the Philosophy Forum
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
March 25, 2025
Membership in the Philosophy Forum1 is by invitation only and the moderator requests a letter of introduction from potential members. I will be very interested to see if I am "allowed in." I know nothing about the site moderator, but I do know that philosophers in general ignore the Drug War completely and seem to think that it is bad manners even to mention the topic. But fingers crossed. Check back to this page from time to time to see whether the Philosophy Forum will let your old pal Rudolph join in any reindeer games!
Hello, Jamal.
I was wondering if I might join your Philosophy Forum.
I am a 66-year-old philosopher in spirit if not in title. I have written hundreds of philosophically oriented essays against the War on Drugs and drug prohibition as The Drug War Philosopher at abolishthedea.com. I have also written essays for Sociedelic magazine. I received a BA in Philosophy from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1989. I was offered a job as a TA at the time, but unfortunately, I turned it down. I have come to regret that decision since I now see that my lack of credentials has rendered me more or less invisible online in the world of philosophical discussions.
I am, however, the only professed philosopher who protested on behalf of William James against the FDA's recently announced plan to regulate laughing gas as a "drug.2" As I am sure you know, it was the use of such anesthetics that gave James his view of reality and that he urged philosophers to study the effects of such substances as well.
'No account of the universe in its totality,' wrote James, 'can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded.3'
But many (most?) philosophers are afraid to challenge the drug-war ideology of substance demonization. William James founded the psychology department at Harvard University, and yet Harvard's online bio of James does not even mention his use of such substances or how they shaped his views of reality4.
Don't worry: whenever I post on such subjects in forums, I always make supported inductive or deductive arguments and/or quote identifiable sources: I do not simply rant against the status quo, even though I am depressed that so few philosophers push back against the Drug War, given the fact that it is, in my view, the great philosophical problem of our time. I believe that it represents the triumph of illogical argumentation over common sense, arguments based on unfounded yet unspoken premises -- in other words, it represents a world view which philosophers as such might be thought to be uniquely qualified to anatomize and rebuke, were they not afraid to do so. This is one of the benefits of working outside academia: I can afford to be braver than tenured professors.
I have, in fact, written hundreds of letters to philosophers on this subject, almost all of which have been ignored, however5. The Drug War has frightened academics into silence, which alone is a good enough reason to end it, were there not many other reasons to do so as well, such as the fact that it has brought about the end of the rule of law in Latin America, while turning America's inner-cities into no-go zones and causing unnecessary drug overdoses by refusing to teach safe use and to regulate product. We are also under a sort of intense form of propaganda as westerners, thanks to which almost no reports of positive drug use can be published or depicted in movies or other media - this despite the fact that user reports in books by researchers such as Alexander Shulgin6 (and James Fadiman7, William Richards8, Stanislav Grof9, etc.) imply endless potential for common-sense therapeutic drug use. Consider the following user reports in Shulgin's book "Pihkal: A Chemical Love Story10":
"The breakthrough I had... the following day... was of the highest value and importance for me.11"
"The feeling was one of great camaraderie, and it was very easy to talk to people.12"
"I am experiencing more deeply than ever before the importance of acknowledging and deeply honoring each human being. And I was able to go through and resolve some judgments with particular persons.13"
There are neither "drugs" nor "meds" as those terms are used today. All substances have potential good uses and bad uses. The terms as used today carry value judgements, as in meds good, drugs bad.
The addiction gene should be called the prohibition gene: it renders one vulnerable to prohibition lies and limitations: like the lack of safe supply, the lack of choices, and the lack of information. We should pathologize the prohibitionists, not their victims.
Attempts to improve one's mind and mood are not crimes. The attempt to stop people from doing so is the crime.
We live in a make-believe world in the US. We created it by outlawing all potentially helpful psychological meds, after which the number-one cause of arrest soon became "drugs." We then made movies to enjoy our crackdown on TV... after a tough day of being drug tested at work.
Even when laudanum was legal in the UK, pharmacists were serving as moral adjudicators, deciding for whom they should fill such prescriptions. That's not a pharmacist's role. We need an ABC-like set-up in which the cashier does not pry into my motives for buying a substance.
Uruguay wants to re-legalize psilocybin mushrooms -- but only for use in a psychiatrist's office. So let me get this straight: psychiatrists are the new privileged shaman? It's a mushroom, for God's sake. Just re-legalize the damn thing and stop treating us like children.
We should place prohibitionists on trial for destroying inner cities.
Drug warriors are full of hate for "users." Many of them make it clear that they want users to die (like Gates and Bennett...). The drug war has weaponized inhumanity.
All drugs have potential positive uses for somebody, at some dose, in some circumstance, alone or in combination. To decide in advance that a drug is completely useless is an offense to reason and to human liberty.
Thomas Szasz was not an extremist when it comes to drugs. The extremists are those who feel that psychiatrists know more about our mind and mood than we do.
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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