How drug prohibition has destroyed the American justice system
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
March 17, 2026
I'm still wrapping my head around the Kafkaesque world faced by so-called drug offenders in America as detailed by Colleen Cowles in "War On Us."1 For merely possessing a few pills, Americans are being charged with felonies. Felonies! An estimated eight percent of Americans have felonies, according to a study cited by Cowles, and thirty-three percent of African Americans. 33%. This means far more than that they can be sent to prison for years. Once out, they can be denied educational loans, evicted from public housing, rendered ineligible for food stamps, and forced to submit to drug testing on demand. Even after they've completed years of harassing parole, the law seeks to prevent felons from getting on with their lives. As felons, they are barred from working in a host of jobs, which Colleen tells us include, but is by no means limited to: childcare worker, electrician, engineer, judge, nurse, manicurist, midwife, optometrist, psychologist, school-bus driver, social worker, teacher... even watchman. It makes you wonder what jobs they ARE allowed to hold: circus clown, perhaps? Ayurveda healer? Video game tester? (full-time pundit against the War on Drugs?)
"Most felony drug arrests," as Colleen reports, "are from minimal drug quantities," and yet we punish these folk with the fanaticism of a Torquemada. American Drug Warriors are truly sating their bloodlust. Legislators haven't been so busy trying to ruin the lives of nonviolent citizens since the passage of the anti-Catholic Penal Laws in 16th-century England.
Well, there is at least one hope for these self-medicators, however: if nothing else, they can always run for President of the United States, a job for which a prior felony conviction does not seem to be a problem.
For more specifics on the inhumane consequences of modern drug law in our so-called justice system, I refer the reader to the modern expert on that topic: Colleen Cowles and her eye-opening book: "War on Us: How the War on Drugs and Myths about Addiction Have Created a War on All of Us."2
I conclude with my own takeaways from that book viz. the American justice system.
Drug Prohibition and American Justice
Drug prohibition has destroyed the American justice system by replacing trials with plea deals and placing drug users on an onerous kind of parole in which their life is subject to micromanagement by court-appointed monitors with effectively arbitrary powers. Meanwhile, humiliating high-tech tools like "ankle bracelets," originally designed for violent offenders only, are now given to non-violent drug offenders as well.
We can see what's going on here. Instead of facing the fact that drug prohibition has overloaded the justice system to the point that trials are almost a thing of the past, the powers-that-be have instituted anti-democratic workarounds to deform the system to the point that it can accommodate the hundreds of thousands that we are determined to imprison for the mere possession of psychoactive substances of which politicians disapprove.
Instead of demanding an immediate end to the drug prohibition that has thus destroyed our justice system, respected organizations across America are determined to make as much money off of this hateful status quo as possible. The Corrections industry is just one of the many beneficiaries of the status quo which are determined to hold onto the golden goose of drug prohibition for as long as possible, and they are spending their PR dollars accordingly.
As Colleen Cowles reports in War On Us:
"In 2018, the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association mounted an ad campaign against criminal justice reform in that state. The New York City Patrolmen's Benevolent Association campaigned against parole reform. The California Correctional Peace Officers Association spends approximately $8 million annually on lobbying to defeat criminal justice reform, ranging from opposition to reform of three strikes laws to prison expansion."
Meanwhile, companies like J Pay and Securus earn billions by selling communication services to prisoners at monopoly prices.
Our current system," the author concludes, "is trading profit for public safety and human rights."
But then the profit motive appears everywhere you look in the drug prohibition story. The medical industry had a huge financial interest in demonizing the use of psychoactive godsends like cocaine and opium and thereby supporting drug prohibition. And now that they've had their enormously lucrative way and all would-be drug competitors are rotting in jail, the entrepreneurial vultures are descending on the carnage of strategically ruined lives to see what relative scraps they can pick up in this massive war against Americans who dare to take care of their own psychological health as they see fit. Addiction treatment alone is a $35 billion industry in a world in which "use equals abuse" in the minds of drug-hating judges. And arrestees always need lawyers -- not for a trial, of course, but rather to haggle on their behalf for a plea deal in the prosecutor's office.
Police profit handsomely from drug prohibition as well, especially when they prioritize drug arrests over fighting violent crime. Why would they do that, you ask? Colleen Cowles gives the following two reasons for what she calls these "strange priorities" on the part of law enforcement:
"First, police departments compete for federal anti drug grants with number of arrests and drug seizures strengthening their application for those grants. The grants also incentivize departments to pay for SWAT team armor and weapons, further militarizing our police forces. Secondly, the ability of police departments to pad their own budgets using civil forfeiture statutes makes drug arrests more lucrative than pursuing other types of arrests."
Why, then, is the justice system broken today in America? Answer: Because self-interested parties wouldn't have it any other way.
Author's Follow-up:
March 19, 2026
No wonder the "Justice" Department relies on plea deals; otherwise juries could use nullification to free those charged with mere drug possession.
The front page of every mycology club page should feature a protest of drug laws that make the study of mycology illegal in the case of certain shrooms. But no one protests. Their silence makes them drug war collaborators because it serves to normalize prohibition.
I've been told by many that I should have seen "my doctor" before withdrawing from Effexor. But, A) My doctor got me hooked on the junk in the first place, and, B) That doctor completely ignores the OBVIOUS benefits of indigenous meds and focuses only on theoretical downsides.
Opium is a godsend, as folks like Galen, Avicenna and Paracelsus knew. The drug war has facilitated a nightmare by outlawing peaceable use at home and making safe use almost impossible.
We should not be talking about the potential harm of drugs -- we should be talking about the well-established harm of drug PROHIBITION.
Getting off antidepressants can make things worse for only one reason: because we have outlawed all the drugs that could help with the transition. Right now, getting off any drug basically means becoming a drug-free Christian Scientist. No wonder withdrawal is hard.
Smart people in America are like Don Quixote. They are sane on every subject on earth, but mention the subject of "drugs," and they start talking politically correct blather.
This is why the foes of suicide are doing absolutely nothing to get laughing gas into the hands of those who could benefit from it. Laughing is subjective after all. In the western tradition, we need a "REAL" cure to depression.
If Americans cannot handle the truth about drugs, then there is something wrong with Americans, not with drugs.
Let's arrest drug warriors, confiscate their houses, and deny them jobs in America -- until such time as they renounce their belief in the demonstrably ruinous policy of substance prohibition.
There are no merely recreational drugs. All drugs that elate have obvious potential uses for the depressed.
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