Drug Prohibition Quotes

I'd like to promote lots of things. I'd like to promote elimination of drug prohibition. I'd like to promote parental choice in education through vouchers. Those are two things I think are very urgent and important. They're both more important than the harm which Social Security will do.

On prohibiting anybody from learning anything: Why, in five years we would have the smartest race of people on earth.

Laws to suppress tend to strengthen what they would prohibit.

Laws to suppress tend to strengthen what they would prohibit. This is the fine point on which all legal professions of history have based their job security.

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

I'd rather that England should be free than that England should be compulsorily sober. With freedom we might in the end attain sobriety, but in the other alternative we should eventually lose both freedom and sobriety.

Power is sweet; it is a drug, the desire for which increases with a habit.

Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.

Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way to the common feelings of mankind.

Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now.

While democracy must have its organizations and controls, its vital breath is individual liberty.

Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves.

Every hour spent investigating a drug user or seller is an hour that could have been used to find a missing child.

Every dollar spent to punish a drug user or seller is a dollar that cannot be spent collecting restitution from a robber. Every hour spent investigating a drug user or seller is an hour that could have been used to find a missing child. Every trial held to prosecute a drug user or seller is court time that could be used to prosecute a rapist in a case that might otherwise have been plea bargained.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.

Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men.

The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this.

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.

Mistrust those in whom the urge to punish is strong.

I am against Prohibition because it has set the cause of temperence back twenty years; because it has substituted an ineffective campaign of force for an effective campaign of education; because it has replaced comparatively uninjurious light wines and beers with the worst kind of hard liquor and bad liquor; because it has increased drinking not only among men but has extended drinking to women and even children.

Congress should definitely consider decriminalizing possession of marijuana. We should concentrate on prosecuting the rapists and burglars who are a menace to society.

Marihuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

Prohibition only drives drunkenness behind doors and into dark places, and does not cure it or even diminish it.

Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.

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.

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.

Prohibition... goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes... A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.

Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself

There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

It is not the function of government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error.

Instead of giving money to found colleges to promote learning, why don't they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as good as the Prohibition one did, why, in five years we would have the smartest race of people on earth.

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

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.

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.

On average, drug prisoners spend more time in federal prison than rapists, who often get out on early release because of the overcrowding in prison caused by the Drug War.

Alcohol is a very patient drug. It will wait for the alcoholic to pick it up one more time.

If you say, "Would there were no wine" because of the drunkards, then you must say, going on by degrees, "Would there were no steel," because of the murderers, "Would there were no night," because of the thieves, "Would there were no light," because of the informers, and "Would there were no women," because of adultery.

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.

Legalizing drugs would simultaneously reduce the amount of crime and raise the quality of law enforcement. Can you conceive of any other measure that would accomplish so much to promote law and order?

Children are often the silent victims of drug abuse.

Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water.