Drug Prohibition Quotes

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.

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?

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

Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Marihuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing.

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.

Laws provide against injury from others; but not 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.

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

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

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

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

Children are often the silent victims of drug abuse.