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You have the right to give up your rights

The injustice of plea dealing in the age of drug prohibition

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

March 16, 2026



I asked AI the following question this afternoon:

How many felonies were committed in 2025 and how many were drug-related?


It responded as follows:

"In 2025, there were over 1.5 million drug-related arrests in the United States, indicating a significant number of drug-related felonies. However, the total number of felonies committed in 2025 is not specified in the available data." -- Search Assist AI on Duck Duck Go Browser, question asked on March 16, 2026.


AI only cited two sources for this information -- or rather for this LACK of information -- one of which was a site for "SoCal Defense Attorney" in which a Southern California defense lawyer by the name of Tammy Higgins gives drug prohibition an enormous Mulligan by blaming all of the problems that it causes on drug crime.1

"Drug crimes hurt entire neighborhoods," tut-tuts Tammy, "not just the people involved. Families worry about their safety when drug activity increases nearby." She then goes on to lament the deteriorating property values brought about by such crime, the overwhelming of local healthcare services, the impact on local businesses and local schools, and Tammy doesn't know what-all!

[Sigh]

This is just another case of an American blaming drugs for the problems that are caused by drug prohibition itself, another case of giving drug prohibition a big fat Mulligan for the evil that it has brought to America.

By the way, I was looking up this felony stat after reading Colleen Cowles' account in "War On Us"2 of how drug criminals are subject to cruel and unusual punishment in our so-called justice system. What an eye-opener! Did you know that 97% of all criminal cases in the United States are a result of plea deals? 97%. The cases never go to trial! And this is no wonder. There are 1.4 million drug arrests every year, after all, and as Colleen writes, "If even 1/4 of these cases required prosecutors to actually spend time reviewing facts in detail or preparing for trial to prosecute those charges, the court system would implode."

And what does this mean for those arrested on drug offenses? It means that they are under great pressure to admit to charges, regardless of facts, and to forswear their rights, lest they incur long jail sentences for standing up for those rights.

"You do have the right to demand a trial," writes Colleen, assuming the voice of a deal-making prosecutor, "but did I mention that additional charges may be filed against you if you don't accept this plea agreement? Have you looked at the maximum penalty for what you're charged with? That pill in your pocket could carry seven years. If you go to trial, we'll convince that jury that you need to be behind bars for a long time. Do you really want to risk years in prison?"

We should end plea deals altogether. Let the system implode, and maybe then Americans will see the folly of outlawing our right to our own bodies and what we place therein.

But I'll leave the final word on America's plea-dealing mania to Judge William Young of the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts, whom Colleen quotes as follows from his opinion in the 2004 case of US v. Green:

"This is the essential key to an understanding of federal sentencing policy today. The [Justice] Department is so addicted to plea bargaining to leverage its law enforcement resources to an overwhelming conviction rate that the focus of our entire criminal justice system has shifted far away from trials and juries and adjudication to a massive system of sentence bargaining that is heavily rigged against the accused citizen."3




Author's Follow-up:

March 19, 2026

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up


No wonder the "Justice" Department relies on plea deals; otherwise juries could use nullification to free those charged with mere drug possession.






Key Takeaways:






Notes for essay entitled You have the right to give up your rights: The injustice of plea dealing in the age of drug prohibition:

1: A Look at How Many Drug-Related Crimes Happen Each Year Higgins, Tammy, SoCal Criminal Defense Lawyer, 2025 (up)
2: “War on Us – the War on Drugs Is a War on All of Us.” 2019. Waronus.com. 2019. http://waronus.com/. (up)
3: U.S. v. Green V Lex (up)




read more essays here





Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




This is why it's wrong to dismiss drugs as "good" or "bad." There are endless potential positive uses to psychoactive drugs. That's all that we should ask of them.

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.

I'm interested in CBD myself, because I want to gain benefits at times without experiencing intoxication. So I think it's great. But I like it as part of an overall strategy toward mental health. I do not think of CBD, as some do, as a way to avoid using naughty drugs.

Prohibitionists have the same M O they've had for the last 100+ years: blame drugs for everything. Being a drug warrior is never having the decency to say you're sorry -- not to Mexicans, not to inner-city crime victims, not to patients who go without adequate pain relief...

Drug warriors are too selfish and short-sighted to fight real problems, so they blame everything on drugs.

Self-medicating has always been the most basic of human rights, until the medical industry demonized the practice for obvious financial reasons.

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 Drug War has turned America into the world's first "Indignocracy," where our most basic rights can be vetoed by a misinformed public. That's how scheming racist politicians put an end to the 4th amendment to the US Constitution.

Reagan paid a personal price for his idiocy however. He fell victim to memory loss from Alzheimer's, after making a career out of demonizing substances that can grow new neurons in the brain!

Until prohibition ends, rehab is all about enforcing a Christian Science attitude toward psychoactive medicines (with the occasional hypocritical exception of Big Pharma meds).


Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us






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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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