Quotes & Sayings About Drug Users

Casual drug users should be taken out and shot. — Daryl Gates

Although Carroll is now something of an iconic figure for psychedelic drug users, there is only the tiniest shred of evidence that he ever took laudanum, morphine, cocaine, magic mushrooms or indeed that he sampled any mind-altering drugs at all. — Jenny Woolf

The general population still thinks HIV is something that came in the 80s and went away, or that it only affects the gay population or intravenous drug users. — Annie Lennox

Only drug dealers and software companies call their customers 'users' — Edward Tufte

The war on drugs makes it almost impossible for drug users to get milder forms of their drug - and it pushes them inexorably toward harder drugs. — Johann Hari

Reagan's Drugs Czar, Carlton Turner, said that kids deserved to die as a punishment for smoking poisoned weed, to teach them a lesson. Two years later, he called for the death penalty for all drug users. On — Shaun Attwood

The neighborhoods I grew up in were poor and full of drug users. I don't think you have to look that hard to find those kinds of lives. But I also don't think you have to have experienced it really close to be able to empathize. — Jess Walter

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

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

Drug users made me. They taught me. I didn't know how to work a scale; I didn't know what a gram was. Drug users taught me the business. They're going to teach it to the next guy, because they want a good drug dealer, one they can trust, one that's not going to rob them, one that's not going to cheat them out of their money, one that's not going to sell them fake dope. That was me. They're going to find another one because they're going to be looking for that guy every single day until they find him. — Rick Ross

Why is it drug addicts and computer aficionados are both called users? — Clifford Stoll

Brain-imaging studies of drug users at that stage show that viewing a film of actors pretending to use drugs activates dopamine pathways in the brain more than does watching porn films. This — Robert M. Sapolsky

Equal justice is forgotten in our current judicial system. Wealth, power, and prestige protect the ruling class. The counterfeiters, the warmongers, and the thieves who steal from the treasury go free. Our prisons are filled will nonviolent drug users and disproportionately by minorities and the poor. — Ron Paul

Every friend of freedom must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence. — Milton Friedman

Technology is not a panacea. I refuse to work on technology to track users, analyze usage patterns, watermark information, censor, detect drug use, or eavesdrop. I am not naive enough to think any of those technologies could enable a 'compromise'. — Bram Cohen

Treatment is not now available for almost half of those who would benefit from it. Yet we are willing to build more and more jails in which to isolate drug users even though at one-seventh the cost of building and maintaining jail space and pursuing, detaining, and prosecuting the drug user, we could subsidize commensurately effective medical care and psychological treatment. — William F. Buckley Jr.

I don't really care who's doing drugs in the NBA as long as the scene isn't adversely affecting my team and teammates. I've known enough drug users-going as far back as grade school and the streets of New York-not to view them as pariahs or lost souls. I've certainly smoked more than my quota of weed. — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

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

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

There is a safe, nontoxic drug called naloxone that can instantly reverse opioid overdose and prevent most of these deaths. But the drug war interferes with saving overdose victims in two ways: first, because witnesses to overdose fear prosecution, they often don't call for help until it's too late. Second, because the drug war supports the belief that making naloxone available over-the-counter or with opioid prescriptions would encourage drug use, the antidote is available only through harm reduction programs like needle exchanges or in some state programs aimed at drug users. — Maia Szalavitz

If you had a magic wand today, and you had one wish - to wipe out all the drug dealers, take them all off the streets and put them in jail, no trial, everybody who sold drugs would automatically be convicted. You know what's going to happen? There's going to be new ones. Why? Because the drug users are going to create them. — Rick Ross

They never differentiate between drug users and drug addicts ... I've done most drugs there are socially, I never had a problem. — Doug Stanhope

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

Drug warriors' staunch opposition to needle exchanges to prevent the spread of HIV in addicts delayed the programs' widespread introduction in most states for years. A federal ban on funding for these programs wasn't lifted until 2009. Contrast this with what happened in the U.K. At the peak of the AIDS epidemic in the mid-1990s, the HIV infection rate in IV drug users in the U.K. was about 1%. In New York City, the American epicenter, that figure was 50%. The British had introduced widespread needle exchange in 1986. That country had no heterosexual AIDS epidemic. — Maia Szalavitz

I began to study marijuana in 1967 ... I had not yet learned that there is something very special about illicit drugs. If they don't always make the drug user behave irrationally, they certainly cause many non-users to behave that way. — Lester Grinspoon

A regime that trawls for drug users or other petty delinquents will net a certain number of violent people as bycatch, further thinning the ranks of the violent people who remain on the streets. Incarceration — Steven Pinker

The noted Yale computer science professor Edward Tufte once observed that there are only two industries that refer to their customers as users: computer designers and drug dealers. Importantly, you are equally as likely to recover damages from either of them for the harms their products cause. — Marc Goodman

Sitting on the train I watch the scenery speeding by, notice a cobweb in the top corner of the window, undulating with a gentle breeze I can't feel. I lean back in my seat and take my book out of the carrier bag. Turning it over in my hand, it feels warm. It feels how I want to feel; full of knowledge, full of the future.
The time I've spent staying in bed smoking dope I've been hibernating, recuperating and gaining strength. I'm weak socially, but being away from other drug users has made me resilient. It's allowed my mind and body to heal and mend. As if the winter is over, I've come out stronger now. I'm on my own. I have the choice of what to do with my life.
I'm going to stay clean. I'm going to be the woman I can be. — Christine Lewry

The greatest spiritual leaders in history have all preached love for others as the basis for all happiness, and never did they accompany such mandates with a list of unlovable actions or deeds. They never said, love everybody except for the gays. Love everybody except for the homeless. Love everybody except for the drug users. Love everybody except for the gang members, or those covered in ink, or the spouse abusers. They didn't tell us it was okay to love everybody with the exception of the "trailer trash," those living in poverty, or the illegal immigrants. They didn't tell us it was okay to love everybody except for our ex-lovers, our lovers' ex lovers, or our ex-lovers' lovers. The mandate was pretty damn clear, wasn't it?
Love others.
Period. — Dan Pearce

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

This plea comes from the bottom of my heart. Every friend of freedom, and I know you are one, must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence. A country in which shooting down unidentified planes "on suspicion" can be seriously considered as a drug-war tactic is not the kind of United States that either you or I want to hand on to future generations. — Milton Friedman

I don't think that there would be more users if drugs were legalized. — Roman Polanski

We cannot run away from the needs of LGBTI, sex workers, drug users, prisoners, and people with a disability. — Michel Sidibe

I have known a lot of people in my life, and I can tell you this ... Some of the ones who understood love better than anyone else were those who the rest of the world had long before measured as lost or gone. Some of the people who were able to look at the dirtiest, the poorest, the gays, the straights, the drug users, those in recovery, the basest of sinners, and those who were just ... plain ... different.
They were able to look at them all and only see strength. Beauty. Potential. Hope.
And if we boil it down, isn't that what love actually is? — Dan Pearce

Addiction should never be treated as a crime. It has to be treated as a health problem. We do not send alcoholics to jail in this country. Over 500,000 people are in our jails who are nonviolent drug users. — Ralph Nader

A person cannot take the strain of maintaining lifelong crushes on every last celebrity who has ever graced her adolescent walls. We all have our reasons to let them go: They become sullen drug users, or they come out as gay, or we come out as gay, or they go and do something so terrible, so heinous, that we must forget that we were ever attracted to them in the first place. — Katie Heaney

Marijuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death. — Harry J. Anslinger

Users of marijuana become STIMULATED as they inhale the drug and are LIKELY TO DO ANYTHING. Most crimes of violence in this section, especially in country districts are laid to users of that drug. — William Randolph Hearst

Western governments ... will lose the war against dealers unless efforts are switched to prevention and therapy ... All penalties for drug users should be dropped ... Making drug abuse a crime is useless and even dangerous ... Every year we seize more and more drugs and arrest more and more dealers but at the same time the quantity available in our countries still increases ... Police are losing the drug battle worldwide. — Raymond Kendall

Methamphetamine is a hideous drug. Meth makes a person become paranoid, violent, and aggressive - making them a serious threat to society and law enforcement. And maybe more importantly, meth users are a threat to their own children and families. — Dirk Kempthorne

African Americans constituted only 15 percent of current drug users in 1995, and they constitute roughly the same percentage today. — Michelle Alexander

But love's not just the drug; it's also the dealer. Love wants love in return, am I right, Olly? Like drugs, the highs look divine, and I envy the users. But when the side effects kick in - jealousy, the rages, grief, I think, Count me out. Elizabethans equated romantic love with insanity. Buddhists view it as a brat throwing a tantrum at the picnic of the calm mind. — David Mitchell

I can't think of anything off the top of my head that seems more important than something designed to raise money to keep something going that keeps IV drug users from dying. — Elliott Smith

If I had to offer up a one sentence definition of addiction, I'd call it a form of mourning for the irrecoverable glories of the first time ... addiction can show us what is deeply suspect about nostalgia. That drive to return to the past isn't an innocent one. It's about stopping your passage to the future, it's a symptom of fear of death, and the love of predictable experience.
And the love of predictable experience, not the drug itself, is the major damage done to users. — Ann Marlowe

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

Periodization isn't magic--you can't out-periodize your genetics, drug users, or stupidity. — Craig Cecil

Well, we can't leave anyone behind just because they are sex workers or they are needle users, intravenous drug users, prostitutes. — Elton John

I've been told by professional drug users that if I did the drugs, I would like the Dead. It seems like the most effective PSA against drugs could just play some Dead jams and say, "If you do drugs, you will like this kind of music." What other deterrent would one need? — Penn Jillette

My stance has always been that there's no place in our sport for drug users. I've always said it's a ban for life if you come up positive. I stand by that. — Maurice Greene