Drug Prohibition Quotes & Sayings

It's not other people that hurt us, but what we feel about them — Joseph Fink

Been there, Remiel. Done that. Wore the T-Shirt, ate the burger, bought the original cast album, choreographed the legions of the damned and orchestrated the screaming. — Neil Gaiman

The prohibition of drugs causes crime. You don't have to legalize, just decriminalize it. — Jesse Ventura

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 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

It is impossible to tell whether prohibition is a good thing or a bad thing. It has never been enforced in this country. — Fiorello H. La Guardia

Nobody tells the history of marijuana and its prohibition like Russ Belville does. He has a special talent for presenting scholarship in a remarkably engaging way. That's why I turned to Russ when I needed someone to present on the subject to the annual staff retreat of the Drug Policy Alliance. And it's why I repeatedly recommend him for speaking and media opportunities. He's good! — Ethan Nadelmann

A secret needs two faces to bounce between; a secret needs to see itself in another pair of eyes. — Stephen King

There are criminals who are drug users, but most addicts are criminals only by virtue of prohibition or from resorting to crime to pay inflated black market prices. — Danny Sugerman

A drug is neither moral nor immoral - it's a chemical compound. The compound itself is not a menace to society until a human being treats it as if consumption bestowed a temporary license to act like an asshole. — Frank Zappa

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

If even a small fraction of the money we now spend on trying to enforce drug prohibition were devoted to treatment and drug rehabilitation, in an atmosphere of compassion not punishment, the reduction in drug usage and in the harm done to users could be dramatic. — Milton Friedman

When we finally decide that drug prohibition has been no more successful than alcohol prohibition, the drug dealers will disappear. — Ron Paul

The drug war has nothing to do with making communities livable or creating a decent future for black kids. On the contrary, prohibition is directly responsible for the power of crack dealers to terrorize whole neighborhoods. And every cent spent on the cops, investigators, bureaucrats, courts, jails, weapons, and tests required to feed the drug-war machine is a cent not spent on reversing the social policies that have destroyed the cities, nourished racism, and laid the groundwork for crack culture. — Ellen Willis

Liquor prohibition led to the rise of organized crime in America, and drug prohibition has led to the rise of the gang problems we have now. — Drew Carey

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.

The current fad in art, is to shock people or appear 'different' ... My goal is to help people find the rays of sunshine in an often dark world. — Gary Holland

Drugs are a tragedy for addicts. But criminalizing their use converts that tragedy into a disaster for society, for users and non-users alike. Our experience with the prohibition of drugs is a replay of our experience with the prohibition of alcoholic beverages. — Milton Friedman

Ethan Nadelmann, one of the leading drug reformers in the United States, had explained: People overdose because [under prohibition] they don't know if the heroin is 1 percent or 40 percent ... Just imagine if every time you picked up a bottle of wine, you didn't know whether it was 8 percent alcohol or 80 percent alcohol [or] if every time you took an aspirin, you didn't know if it was 5 milligrams or 500 milligrams. — Johann Hari

Alcohol didn't cause the high crime rates of the '20s and '30s, Prohibition did. And drugs do not cause today's alarming crime rates, but drug prohibition does. — James Carriger Paine

Why did he always have to be the one left behind? Why did he always have to be the one to gather the broken pieces and glue them back together, a mockery of what he'd once been? Why did he always have to suffer through the loss - that gaping, wrenching loss that sucked him up, ripped him apart, and carelessly threw him aside? — Ais

In the 1920s, we thought the problems associated with alcohol could be solved by police and jails. Prohibition taught us we were wrong. The strategy of the present drug war is Prohibition redux. — Rodney S. Quinn

I can't untangle, I can't untangle what I feel and what would matter most. — Sara Quin

The problem is, we've had three generations of Iranians who have come to really hate the United States. The Persians used to be a pretty strong - my on problem with people who say don't talk to him. — Bob Beckel

Drug prohibition has caused gang warfare and other violent crimes by raising the prices of drugs so much that vicious criminals enter the market to make astronomical profits, and addicts rob and steal to get money to pay the inflated prices for their drugs. — Michael Badnarik

Common fluency of speech in many men and most women is owing to a scarcity of matter. — Jonathan Swift

One role of prohibition is in making the drug market more lucrative. — Milton Friedman

Sir, can you hear me?" Another cry. But this time, a voice I don't detest.
"Sire, please, can you hear me-"
"I've been shot, Delalieu," I manage to say. I open my eyes. Look into his watery ones. "I haven't gone deaf. — Tahereh Mafi

The accession of not one but three illegal drug users in a row to the US presidency constitutes an existential challenge to the prohibitionist regime. The fact that some of the most successful people of our time, be it in business, finances, politics, entertainment or the arts, are current or former substance users is a fundamental refutation of its premises and a stinging rebuttal of its rationale. A criminal law that is broken at least once by 50% of the adult population and that is broken on a regular basis by 20% of the same adult population is a broken law, a fatally flawed law. How can a democratic government justify a law that is consistently broken by a substantial minority of the population? What we are witnessing here is a massive case of civil disobedience not seen since alcohol prohibition in the 1930 in the US. On what basis can a democratic system justify the stigmatization and discrimination of a strong minority of as much as 20% of its population? — Jeffrey Dhywood