Decriminalization Quotes & Sayings

The growing policy-reform movement is a broad church. It includes everyone from ganja-smoking Rastafarians to free-market fundamentalists and all in between. There are socialists who think the drug war hurts the poor, capitalists who see a business opportunity, liberals who defend the right to choose, and fiscal conservatives who complain America is spending $40 billion a year on the War on Drugs rather than making a few billion taxing it. The movement can't agree on much other than that the present policy doesn't work. People disagree on whether legalized drugs should be controlled by the state, by corporations, by small businessmen, or by grow-your-own farmers, and on whether they should be advertised, taxed, or just handed out free in white boxes to addicts. — Ioan Grillo

"I think decriminalization would've been a wiser first step." — John Hickenlooper

Decriminalization would take the profit out of drugs and greatly reduce, if not eliminate, the drug-related violence that is currently plaguing our streets. — Kurt Schmoke

Workers in industry are the partners in war of the fighting forces. — William Lyon Mackenzie King

[T]he true natural sciences lock together in theory and evidence to form the ineradicable technical base of modern civilization. The pseudosciences satisfy personal psychological needs ... but lack the ideas or the means to contribute to the technical base. — E. O. Wilson

Sex was for men. Marriage, like lifeboats, was for women and children. — Carrie Fisher

He cried into her hair until he fell asleep. — Rainbow Rowell

His features, which would later settle into pleasant collaboration, was growing at different rates, giving him a curious face that seemed designed by committee. — Laura Hillenbrand

I prefer to sing in the shower because the acoustics make you sound great, baby. — Naima Adedapo

I am for decriminalization. The significant aspect of that is that we don't force prostitutes to have to get a license to work. I think the whole idea of licensing consensual sex between adults is offensive. — Chester Brown

Gay rights aren't predicated on being born gay or having the right gene. Gay rights are predicated on having choice and consent. If you're a man and you can find another man that consents to have sex with you, it's the consent that gives you the right to have sex with him. Genetics are irrelevant when it comes to sexual rights. Just as gay rights are based on choice and consent, so are prostitution rights. All sexual rights are based on choice and consent. — Chester Brown

People (or students) do not have shortcomings, only uniquenesses. The goal of a good teacher is to turn these uniquenesses into advantages. — Israel Gelfand

I know a place that serves great falafel." "Falafel?" "No, I don't feel awful." Herb grinned. "I feel pretty good. — J.A. Konrath

Educated, well-to-do Baby Boomers are disciplined in their hedonism, careful that their peccadillos don't impede their scramble for success. For the most part, the rich have developed a relatively safe and moderate approach to drugs, and for the few who haven't, well, there's professional help. Decriminalization of marijuana won't hurt the strong. But what about the weak? Kids who use marijuana regularly get lower test scores, are more likely to drop out of high school, and are less likely to go to college. And who are they? A 2011 study reports that children of parents who have not completed high school are twice as likely to smoke marijuana as children of those who have completed college. Again, new freedoms harm the vulnerable. The — R. R. Reno

I wish I could put a pen in your hand and gently remind you how the world has given you poetry and now you must give it back. — Lang Leav

Much of the apparent uniformity of Nature is a uniformity of averages. Our gross senses only take cognizance of the average effect of vast numbers of individual particles and processes; and the regularity of the average might well be compatible with a great degree of lawlessness of the individual. I do not think it is possible to dismiss statistical laws (such as the second law of thermodynamics) as merely mathematical adaptations of the other classes of law to certain practical problems. — Arthur Stanley Eddington

The main point in our report was to recommend decriminalization ... because of the way laws are applied, which have not worked. We have applied them for decades and it's got the prisons filled with lots of young people who sometimes come out destroyed for having half an ounce ... We should approach it through education and health issues rather than a brutal reaction ... There is need for change in policy, but it has to start with debate and discussion ... I think the whole approach has to be reviewed. — Kofi Annan

Drugs have destroyed many lives, but wrongheaded governmental policies have destroyed many more. I think it's obvious that after 40 years of war on drugs, it has not worked. There should be decriminalization of drugs. — Kofi Annan

The problem is that Americans use the state as a moral compass. For libertarians, it is often frustrating to explain that advocating the decriminalization of x is not synonymous with endorsing x. — David Harsanyi

The instincts of the ant are very unimportant, considered as the ants; but the moment a ray of relation is seen to be a monitor, a little body with a mighty heart, then all its habits, even that said to be recently observed, that it never sleeps, become sublime. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you disclose your alms, even then it is well done, but if you keep them secret, and give them to the poor, then that is better still for you;?and this wipes off from you some of your evil deeds. — Muhammad

America needs fewer laws, not more prisons. — James Bovard