Drug Laws Quotes & Sayings

From the outset, the drug war could have been waged primarily in overwhelmingly white suburbs or on college campuses. SWAT teams could have rappelled from helicopters in gated suburban communities and raided the homes of high school lacrosse players known for hosting coke and ecstasy parties after their games. The police could have seized televisions, furniture, and cash from fraternity houses based on an anonymous tip that a few joints or a stash of cocaine could be found hidden in someone's dresser drawer. Suburban homemakers could have been placed under surveillance and subjected to undercover operations designed to catch them violating laws regulating the use and sale of prescription "uppers." All of this could have happened as a matter of routine in white communities, but it did not. — Michelle Alexander

People who know nothing about advertising, nothing about pharmaceuticals, and nothing about economics have been loudly proclaiming that the drug companies spend too much on advertising - and demanding that the government pass laws based on their ignorance. — Thomas Sowell

I guess nobody assumes anybody is a libertarian. It's a more complex political discussion than most people are used to, to explain why you think the way you do about public education or drug laws, and why it's not as simple as being for or against something. — Dave Barry

The current prohibition laws are forcing drug disputes to be played out with guns in our streets. We need to put a stop to this criminal drug element in our country. — Gary Johnson

For the past seven years we have been cracking down on crime in Missouri, passing tougher laws for drug crimes and sex offenses and requiring prisoners to serve more time. — Mel Carnahan

For anybody who suspects that we need to reform the drug laws, there is an easier argument to make, and a harder argument to make. The easier argument is to say that we all agree drugs are bad - it's just that drug prohibition is even worse. — Johann Hari

Drug-war forfeiture laws are frequently used to allow those with assets to buy their freedom, while drug users and small-time dealers with few assets to trade are subjected to lengthy prison terms. — Michelle Alexander

How many thousands of lives would be saved if we enforced our immigration laws, our guns laws, and our drug laws? Public safety is not being held hostage by the 'gun lobby,' but by the open borders lobby and the anti-law enforcement lobby. — Jeff Sessions

You got a million drug laws now because the bosses figured there was more money in putting people in jail than taxing something anyone can grow on a window sill. — Lenny Bruce

And yes - he will come to puking himself and feeling like stabbed through the head, but better there than in ambulance, BOOM, shirt cut open, mask jammed down on him, peoples slapping his face to wake him, laws involved, everyone very harsh and judgmental - believe me, Narcan, very very violent experience, you feel bad enough when you come round without being in hospital, bright lights and everyone very disapproving and hostile, treating you like shit, 'drug addict,' 'overdose,' all these nasty looks, maybe not letting you go home when you want, psych ward maybe, social worker marching in to give you the big 'So Much to Live For' talk and maybe on top of it all, nice visit from the cops - Hang — Donna Tartt

Maybe today some people see opposition between, on the one hand, a seemingly barren, old, institutional church, cut off from the world, looking after buildings, and worried about membership and attendance, and on the other hand, new communities, filled with life, enthusiasm, risk, openness and welcome, concerned about the big issues of the world - injustice, torture, peace, disarmament, ecology, a better distribution of wealth, the liberation of women, drug addiction, AIDS, people with handicaps, etc ... But we know that every community, with time, risks closing in on itself and becoming an empty institution governed by laws. The new communities of today can become the closed up, barren institutions of tomorrow. — Jean Vanier

You wanna get rid of drug crime in this country? Fine, let's just get rid of all the drug laws. — Ron Paul

One of the things that has happened is that our drug laws have been institutionalized now. If you want to say that somebody's a bad person in a movie or in a television show or something about that, you say they sell drugs or they use drugs. — Carl Hart

The government's drug laws were at best proven ineffectual every day and at worst were misguidedly focused on supply rather than demand, randomly conceived and unevenly and unfairly enforced based on race and class, and thus intellectually and morally bankrupt. And those things all were true. — Piper Kerman

What mostly prevents black people from voting is that drug laws send them to prison, and then they can't vote. — Bill Maher

If [drugs] didn't exist, our government would have to invent them, the better to enact laws aimed at keeping the citizens "sinless and obedient." — Gore Vidal

I want the state to take away people's guns. But I don't want the state to use methods against gun owners that I deplore when used against naughty children, sexual minorities, drug users, and unsightly drinkers. Since such reprehensible police practices are probably needed to make anti-gun laws effective, my proposal to ban all guns should probably be marked a failure before it is even tried. — Aryeh Neier

The amount of money and of legal energy being given to prosecute hundreds of thousands of Americans who are caught with a few ounces of marijuana in their jeans simply makes no sense - the kindest way to put it. A sterner way to put it is that it is an outrage, an imposition on basic civil liberties and on the reasonable expenditure of social energy. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself; and where they are, they should be changed. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against possession of marijuana in private for personal use ... Therefore, I support legislation amending Federal law to eliminate all Federal criminal penalties for the possession of up to one ounce [28g] of marijuana. — Jimmy Carter

Federal drug forfeiture laws are one reason, Blumenson and Nilsen note, why state and federal prisons now confine large numbers of men and women who had relatively minor roles in drug distribution networks, but few of their bosses. — Michelle Alexander

Repealing drug laws would remove the risks involved with producing and distributing drugs, bringing 'street prices' crashing down (it's estimated that a 'spoon' of heroin would cost about a quarter in the free market), thereby eradicating any incentive that criminals might have to compete with legitimate businesses, and greatly reducing if not eliminating altogether any economic reason to ' push ' drugs on children. — L. Neil Smith

By more than two to one Americans do not consider what Kevorkian did, injecting a terminally ill patient with legal drugs at the patient's request, to be the same as murder. You may want to note that laws are not supposed to be enforced on the basis of public opinion polls. — Dan Rather

Strict gun laws are about as effective as strict drug laws ... It pains me to say this, but the NRA seems to be right: The cities and states that have the toughest gun laws have the most murder and mayhem. — Mike Royko

In the "Personal Story" segment tonight, the state of Oregon is extremely liberal in its state government and judicial system.That state has lenient drug laws, including wide access to medical marijuana. — Bill O'Reilly

Mandatory sentencing laws are frequently justified as necessary to keep "violent criminals" off the streets, yet these penalties are imposed most often against drug offenders and those who are guilty of nonviolent crimes. — Michelle Alexander

Laws against things like drugs are inhumane, and create an inhumane society and inhumane law enforcement. I know what's causing violence in America - the damn drug laws. — Michael Moriarty

We should not have drug laws or a court system that disproportionately punishes the black community. — Rand Paul

Individual freedom and drug laws contradict each other. In a genuinely free society, people are free to ingest whatever they want to ingest, no matter how harmful or destructive. What people ingest is none of the government's business. If drug users or drug addicts wish to get help, a free society provides the means to do so. — Jacob G. Hornberger

The opposite of addiction is human connection. And I think that has massive implications for the war on drugs. The treatment of drug addicts almost everywhere in the world is much closer to Tent City than it is to anything in Portugal. Our laws are built around the belief that drug addicts need to be punished to stop them. But if pain and trauma and isolation cause addiction, then inflicting more pain and trauma and isolation is not going to solve that addiction. It's actually going to deepen it. — Johann Hari

More than 50 percent of Americans have breached the drug laws. Where a law is that widely broken, you can't possibly enforce it against every lawbreaker. The legal system would collapse under the weight of it. So you go after the people who are least able to resist, to argue back, to appeal - the poorest and most disliked groups. In the United States, they are black and Hispanic people, with a smattering of poor whites. — Johann Hari

The federal war on drugs is a total failure ... The federal government's going in there and overriding state laws ... Why don't we handle the drugs like we handle alcohol? ... I fear the drug war because it undermines our civil liberties. It magnifies our problems on the borders. We've spent over the last 40 years a trillion dollars on this war and - believe me - the kids can still get the drugs. It just hasn't worked. — Ron Paul

There will never be peace until God's house and God's people are given their rightful place of leadership at the top of the world. How can there be peace when drunkards, drug dealers, communists, atheists, New Age worshipers of Satan, secular humanists, oppressive dictators, greedy money changers, revolutionary assassins, adulterers, and homosexuals are on top ... There is absolutely no way that government can operate successfully unless led by godly men and women operating under the laws of the God of Jacob — Pat Robertson

But since President Obama allowed Colorado and Washington to legalize recreational use and sales of marijuana following initiatives in 2012, the United Stets itself is probably now violating international law. (Because we have traditional been the ones who interpret and enforce these laws, it's hard to know exactly; of course, we say we are not.) And with even federal drug control officials slowly embracing harm reduction officially, we have remained silent on New Zealand's law. — Maia Szalavitz

Those pinked-skinned Jesus freaks that made the laws and owned the prisons were makin' more money off the drug game than we ever did. — Connor Pritchard

When I say that someone is being treated like a criminal, I mean that person is being treated like he broke the law or otherwise did something wrong. (When I want to say someone is being treated as less than human, I say that person is being treated like an animal, not a criminal.) Her chattel slavery and Jim Crow analogies are similarly tortured and yet another effort to explain away stark racial differences in criminality. But unlike prisons, those institutions punished people for being black, not for misbehaving. (A slave who never broke the law remained a slave.) Yet Alexander insists that we blame police and prosecutors and drug laws and societal failures - anything except individual behavior - and even urges the reader to reject the notion of black free will. — Jason L. Riley

America didn't have a drug problem before it passed drug laws. — L. Neil Smith