Legalization Quotes

In the studies I have directed, and in my international experience speaking with women in prostitution, the majority of women in prostitution come from marginalized groups with a history of sexual abuse, drug and alcohol dependencies, poverty or financial disadvantage, lack of education, and histories of other vulnerabilities. These factors characterize women in both off and on-street locations. A large number of women in prostitution are pimped or drawn into the sex industry at an early age. These are women whose lives will not change for the better if prostitution is decriminalized. Many have entrenched problems that are best addressed not by keeping women indoors but in establishing programs where women can be provided with an exit strategy and the services that they need to regain their lost lives. There is little evidence that decriminalization or legalization of prostitution improves conditions for women in prostitution, on or off the street. It certainly makes things better for the sex industry, which is provided with legal standing, and the government that enjoys increased revenues from accompanying regulation. ~ Janice G. Raymond

Partial legalization, as some are suggesting, is a dangerous path, and we need only look at France and Germany to see how unwise it is to create a permanent underclass. ~ Zoe Lofgren

"One of the best things about marijuana legalization: "I think the black market has been damaged. I think people are willing to pay taxes and to go through pretty rigorous regulation." ~ John Hickenlooper

In the economic sphere, the program demanded thorough decentralization and managerial independence of enterprises, as well as legalization of small-scale private enterprise, especially in the service sector. ~ Alexander Dubcek

I think it's the snack food industry that's really pushing the marijuana legalization issue in California. ~ John Pappas

I read that as marijuana legalization becomes more popular, it could affect the jobs of drug-sniffing dogs. Or as those dogs put it, 'Thanks, Bo Obama.' ~ Jimmy Fallon

The argument that personal moral views should not be imposed on others when it comes to lawmaking is incoherent and misleading. It is incoherent because a great deal of law implicitly "imposes" a particular moral view on the wider society. It would be disingenuous to pretend that the legalization of abortion on demand or euthanasia does not impose a certain moral view on the rest of society. This is especially true when arguments for abortion and euthanasia are based on rights. The appeal to rights is a moral argument, and it is this appeal to moral authority that gives force to laws enshrining rights. ~ George Cardinal Pell

In Freakonomics, we examined the causes of the rise and fall of violent crime in the United States. In 1960, crime began a sudden climb. By 1980, the homicide rate had doubled, reaching a historic peak. For several years crime stayed perilously high, but in the early 1990s it began to fall and kept falling. So what happened?
In Freakonomics, we identified one missing factor - the legalization of abortion in the early 1970s. The theory was jarring but simple. A rise in abortion meant that fewer unwanted children were being born, which meant fewer children growing up in the sort of difficult circumstances that increase the likelihood of criminality. ~ Steven D. Levitt

The two parts cannot be done simultaneously. A border fence must be started first - and completed first. Only after all the ACLU lawsuits and INS rulings have run their course, and the border is still secure, do we move to Step Two. I happen to think we don't do the amnesty part ever, but it's tendentious even to discuss what to do with illegal aliens already here until we can prevent more from coming. We'll talk about legalization as soon as it's as hard to get into the United States as it used to be to get out of East Germany. To review: Step One: Secure the border. Step Two: Discuss what to do with illegals already here. ~ Ann Coulter

We've got a national campaign by drug legalizers, in my view, to try and use medicinal uses of drugs and legalization of hemp as a stalking horse to get in under the radar screen. ~ Barry McCaffrey

legalization is associated with a 2.7 percentage point decrease in the probability of having been offered, sold, or given an illegal drug at school. ~ Anonymous

Most troublesome is the legalization of 'crowd funding,' the ability of start-up companies to raise capital from small investors on the Internet. ~ Steven Rattner

The growing policy-reform movement is a broad church. It includes everyone from ganja-smoking Rastafarians to free-market fundamentalists and all in between. There are socialists who think the drug war hurts the poor, capitalists who see a business opportunity, liberals who defend the right to choose, and fiscal conservatives who complain America is spending $40 billion a year on the War on Drugs rather than making a few billion taxing it. The movement can't agree on much other than that the present policy doesn't work. People disagree on whether legalized drugs should be controlled by the state, by corporations, by small businessmen, or by grow-your-own farmers, and on whether they should be advertised, taxed, or just handed out free in white boxes to addicts. ~ Ioan Grillo

Thirty-two years after the legalization of abortion by the Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, the majority of Americans consider themselves pro-life. ~ Rick Santorum

A house panel in Texas has approved full marijuana legalization for the state. Yeah, meaning Texas could go from having dude ranches to 'Dude, ranches.' ~ Jimmy Fallon

Lynching's legacy, though, is also evident today in law enforcement's freedom from accountability in the shooting of black and other youth of color, thus displaying a de facto, and often actual, legalization of white supremacist killing of black life. ~ Mark Lewis Taylor

The diabolical work that has taken place since the legalization of abortion is that it has destroyed, in those tragic women who have allowed their child to be murdered, their sense for the sacredness of maternity. Abortion not only murders the innocent; it spiritually murders women ... the wound created in their souls is so great that only God's grace can heal it. The very soul of a woman is meant to be maternal. ~ Alice Von Hildebrand

She's not a pothead. That thing on her neck is a vase. And anyway, I'm all for legalization. After all, why should surrealism be illegal? ~ Jarod Kintz

I don't have a chance [on being elected Mayor of New Orleans]. I'm running on the gay marriage, no religion, legalization and taxation of marijuana platform. ~ Brad Pitt

I wouldn't answer the marijuana questions, You know why? Because I don't want some little kid doing what I tried. ~ George H. W. Bush

Drugs, gambling, and prostitution are the Big Three underground 'moneymakers' in consensual crime. There would be, however, significant boosts to the economy if the stigma attached to the other consensual crimes were eliminated through legalization. ~ Peter McWilliams

Marijuana should be legalized. All drugs should be legalized. I'm tired of all the best party people being caged. ~ Thor Benson

Are you interested in medical marijuana but have no idea what it is? In recent years, there is a growing cry for the legalization of cannabis because of its proven health benefits. Read on as we try to look into the basics of the drug, what it really does to the human body, and how it can benefit you. Keep in mind that medical marijuana is not for everyone, so it's important that you know how you're going to be using it before you actually use it.

What is Marijuana?

Most likely, everyone has heard of marijuana and know what it is. However, many people hold misconceptions of marijuana because of inaccurate news and reporting, which has led to the drug being demonized - even when numerous studies have proven the health benefits of medical marijuana when it is used in moderation. (Even though yes, weed is also used as a recreational drug.)

First and foremost, medical marijuana is a plant. The drug that we know of is made of its shredded leaves and flowers of the cannabis sativa or indica plant. Whatever its strain or form, all types of cannabis alter the mind and have some degree of psychoactivity. The plant is made of chemicals, with tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) being the most powerful and causing the biggest impact on the brain.

How is Medical Marijuana Used?

There are several ways medical weed is used, depending on the user's need, convenience and preference. The most common ways are in joint form, and also using bongs and ~ Kurt

We have consistently supported a legalization program which is both generous to the alien and fair to the countless thousands of people throughout the world who seek legally to come to America. The legalization provisions in this act will go far to improve the lives of a class of individuals who now must hide in the shadows, without access to many of the benefits of a free and open society. Very soon many of these men and women will be able to step into the sunlight and, ultimately, if they choose, they may become Americans. ~ Ronald Reagan

I experimented with marijuana a time or two. ~ William J. Clinton

But my humble opinion is, I'm not quite sure where I stand on the legalization of drugs - though, if tequila is legal, pot should probably be legal. ~ Ted Demme

Once you've produced the scientific data that's necessary to make a drug into a medicine, you've gone a long way towards mainstreaming the acceptance of these drugs as having beneficial properties. And then the step to legalization is not that far behind that. ~ Rick Doblin

When I was in England I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it. I didn't inhale. ~ Bill Clinton

I oppose amnesty, I oppose citizenship, I oppose legalization for illegal aliens. I always have and I always will. ~ Ted Cruz

Prison is for rapists, thieves, and murderers. If you lock someone up for smoking a plant that makes them happy, then you're the fucking criminal. ~ Joe Rogan

It is sometimes argued that one of the benefits of legalizing addictive drugs is that they could be taxed, and the government revenues enhanced. From this perspective, this would be the only valid case against legalization. ~ Walter Block

I have never supported legalization, and I do not intend to support legalization. ~ Ted Cruz

Market conservatives" who disdain cultural issues are little different from liberals in their belief that the marketplace (or in the liberals' case, the marketplace of ideas) will somehow produce virtuous, self-governing citizens. Let's call these folks "liberaltarians."

What the liberaltarians, who clamor for drug legalization, free sex, abortion, legalized prostitution, and limitless pornography above all else do not understand is that the sexual revolution that they mistake for freedom is the most serious threat poed to liberty in America. ~ Robert H. Knight

There's a school of thought that says if you legalize drugs it will solve the problem. We're all good liberals, we said let's do it and see what happens. We wanted to be honest about it. So in our brainstorming sessions we'd say, what if? The finding was that all the negative things came out also. The answer is that we didn't believe in the full legalization of drugs. But we don't believe in the criminalization of drugs, either. ~ George Pelecanos

As every close observer of the deadlocks arising from the political correctness knows, the separation of legal justice from moral Goodness –which should be relativized and historicized- ends up in an oppressive moralism brimming with resentment. Without any "organic" social substance grounding the standards of what Orwell approvingly called "common decency" (all such standards having been dismissed as subordinating individual freedoms to proto-Fascist social forms), the minimalist program of laws intended simply to prevent individuals from encroaching upon one another (annoying or "harassing" each other) turns into an explosion of legal and moral rules, an endless process (a "spurious infinity" in Hegel's sense) of legalization and moralization, known as "the fight against all forms of discrimination." If there are no shared mores in place to influence the law, only the basic fact of subjects "harassing other subjects, who-in the absence of mores- is to decide what counts as "harassment"? In France, there are associations of obese people demanding all the public campaigns against obesity and in favor of healthy eating be stopped, since they damage the self-esteem of obese persons. The militants of Veggie Pride condemn the speciesism" of meat-eaters (who discriminate against animals, privileging the human animal-for them, a particularly disgusting form of "fascism") and demand that "vegeto-phobia" should be treated as a kind of xenophobia and proclaimed a crime. And we could e ~ Slavoj Zizek

There has never been a 'war on drugs'! In our history we can only see an ongoing conflict amongst various drug users – and producers. In ancient Mexico the use of alcohol was punishable by death, while the ritualistic use of mescaline was highly worshipped. In 17th century Russia, tobacco smokers were threatened with mutilation or decapitation, alcohol was legal. In Prussia, coffee drinking was prohibited to the lower classes, the use of tobacco and alcohol was legal. ~ Sebastian Marincolo

I was totally surprised by the spread of the legalization of same-sex marriage. In just my lifetime we have gone from a taboo to even talk about homosexuality, to the sanction by governments of homosexual marriage. Few such large social considerations have ever before been turned over in such a short time. ~ John Naisbitt

Yes, absolutely because we think there is a way to do this through earned legalization without rewarding people who have come in with undocumented status, illegally. We don't want to give them an advantage over those who came here legally and we think that there's a way to do this while still respecting the rule of law. It's clear that what the President is talking about does not do that ... ~ Paul Ryan

Nobody in America who wants pot has any trouble getting it, so maybe that's why we aren't seeing support for legalization. People don't think it's necessary to legalize it, because it's so easy to get it. ~ Bill Maher

Another myth we fed to the public through the media was that legalizing abortion would only mean that the abortions taking place i1legally would then be done legally. In fact, of course, abortion is now being used as a primary method of birth control in the U.S. and the annual number of abortions has increased by 1,500 percent since legalization. ~ Bernard Nathanson