Drug Policy Quotes

“The legalization of marijuana is not a dangerous experiment – the prohibition is the experiment, and it has failed dramatically, with millions of victims all around the world.”
― Sebastian Marincolo

“Crack had a social logic to it, a specific kind of reasoning that drew from a vast well of common experience for its symbolic resonance. Crack stood for pain and power, chaos and order, the truth behind the lie. Crack was a sociolegal logic grounded in blood.”
― Dimitri A. Bogazianos, 5 Grams: Crack Cocaine, Rap Music, and the War on Drugs

“With drug use related harms, explanatory models are often presented as predictive tools, even though they ‘are [rarely if ever] predictive of consequent behavior’ or outcomes. Hence, we feel confident in asserting at outset, that prohibition based approaches in drug policy lack a sound basis in empirical research (despite sounding logical, i.e. remove drugs or the means of their production and less drugs will be available to users, thus minimising or eliminating harm), and are not animated by well-defined goals, goals that are not only consistent with the ethical and humanitarian aims of public health policy in general, but also with the fundamental principles of democracy) such as empowering or enabling those best placed to act, but by beliefs, assumptions, hypotheses and expectations.”
― Daniel Waterman

“Introduction of rational standards to differentiate between acceptable and unacceptable forms of drug related conduct allows us to hold drug users fully accountable for any harm resulting from irresponsible, stupid or ‘anti-social’ drug use in a manner consistent with current alcohol and tobacco policies, and more importantly, in a manner consistent with our commitment to the principles of liberty, freedom of choice and so on.”
― Daniel Waterman

“Altitude sickness, unregulated drugs and medical gas enabled workers to become drug abusers/addicts”
― Steven Magee

“Over-the-counter ‪‎drug‬ ‪‎abuse‬ or addiction was a problem that I observed at Mauna Kea”
― Steven Magee

“...we have no right to decide off-hand that it is an unnatural pleasure to eat sawdust. A man might be constituted so that he liked it. And so long as his peculiarity doesn't damage or interfere with other people, there's no reason why he shouldn't be left alone.

But if it is the man's fixed belief that sawdust eating is essential to human happiness; if he attributes almost everything that happens either to the effects of eating it or not eating it; if he imagines that most of the people he meets are also sawdust-eaters, and above all, if he thinks that the salvation of the world depends entirely upon making laws to compel people to eat sawdust, whether they like it or not, then it is fair to say that his mind is unbalanced on the subject; and that, further, the practice itself, however innocent it may appear, is in that particular case perverse. Sanity consists in the proper equilibrium of ideas in general. That is the only sense in which it is true that genius is connected with insanity.”
― Aleister Crowley, Diary of a Drug Fiend

“A significant factor often overlooked by those considering the failure of drug policy is the general aim of deflecting or assigning responsibility away from the policy-makers and the ‘moral-majority.”
― Daniel Waterman

“governments should consider ways to shape these markets, rather than simply charge into battle to shut them down at any cost”
― Tom Wainwright, Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel

“Right as the Mexican Drug War rages, the debate is reaching the second great flux in its history. The first came in the seventies, with the Jimmy Carter White House. Legalization advocates, including various doctors, got into key government positions, their papers got play, their ideas gained currency. States began to decriminalize marijuana and cocaine was viewed in the media as a happy-go-lucky party drug. Reformers thought they had won the debate. They were wrong. In the eighties, America lashed back against narcotics with a vengeance, and in the nineties the drug war went on steroids. The crack epidemic broke out, celebrities died of overdoses, and lots of middle-class parents got concerned about lots of middle-class kids on smack, speed, and sensimilla. In the early 1990s, surveys found large numbers of Americans thought drugs were the number one problem the country faced. The media was packed with stories of crack babies, cracked-up gangbangers, and nice white kids turning into demons on drugs.
But that was two decades ago. The pendulum has swung back again. For now. Most people don’t even list drugs in their top ten of America’s problems. The economy is most people’s priority, and terrorism, immigration, crime, religion, abortion, gay marriage, and the environment all spark more concern than narcotics. Meanwhile, drug-policy reformers have emerged strengthened with propositions to decriminalize, spread medical use, and finally fully legalize marijuana. Proposition 19 to legalize cannabis in California narrowly missed passing, getting 46.5 percent in the 2010 vote. Activists are determined it will pass in 2012. And if not, in 2014. Or 2016. They can just keep on going.”
― Ioan Grillo, El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency