War On Drugs Quotes

The war on drugs thrives on ignorance of drugs and misplaced faith in the power of the law to regulate human vice. ~ Tom Feiling

Propaganda must not serve the truth, especially as it might bring out something favorable for the opponent. ~ Adolf Hitler

In 1982 President Ronald Reagan called for a war on drugs: by 1990 more men were in federal prisons on drug charges alone than had comprised the entire 1980 federal prison population for all crimes combined. ~ Laurie Garrett

Just as Hitler used the Reichstag burning, the U.S. government now uses the so-called two wars, the War on Drugs and the War on Terrorism, to fuel fear in the population and establish a police security state. ~ Ralph Metzner

While there is widespread recognition that the War on Drugs is racist and that politicians have refused to invest in jobs or schools in their communities, parents of offenders and ex-offenders still feel intense shame - shame that their children have turned to crime despite the lack of obvious alternatives. One mother of an incarcerated teen, Constance, described her angst this way: "Regardless of what you feel like you've done for your kid, it still comes back on you, and you feel like, 'Well, maybe I did something wrong. Maybe I messed up. You know, maybe if I had a did it this way, then it wouldn't a happened that way.'" After her son's arrest, she could not bring herself to tell friends and relatives and kept the family's suffering private. Constance is not alone. ~ Michelle Alexander

I believe that the war on drugs is a tragically misplaced use of resources - an immoral venture that produces far more suffering than it alleviates. ~ David Harsanyi

All too often the people of our culture think they're really doing something if they're out there fighting bad things and getting laws passed. Just look at what we've accomplished by outlawing drugs and waging a trillion-dollar War on Drugs! (Nothing!) ~ Daniel Quinn

The war on drugs is not being won, and it continues to threaten stability and democracy not only in the Andes but throughout the Caribbean as well, where tiny police and military forces are outclassed by the sophisticated equipment in the hands of traffickers passing through the region on the way to their market in this country. ~ Elliott Abrams

If you want to fight a war on drugs, sit down at your own kitchen table and talk to your own children. ~ Barry McCaffrey

If the Fed had a war on abortion like its war on poverty or war on drugs, within five years men would be having abortions! ~ Harry Browne

Drug use is a primordial animal activity. Among humans , it is immemorial and nearly universal. VVhat then accounts for the 'war on drugs ~ Anonymous

The temptation is to insist that black men 'choose' to be criminals; the system does not make them criminals, at least not in the way that slavery made blacks slaves or Jim Crow made them second-class citizens. The myth of choice here is seductive, but it should be resisted. African Americans are not significantly more likely to use or sell prohibited drugs than whites, but they are made criminals at drastically higher rates for precisely the same conduct. In fact, studies suggest that white professionals may be the most likely of any group to have engaged in illegal drug activity in their lifetime, yet they are the least likely to be made criminals. The prevalence of illegal drug activity among all racial and ethnic groups creates a situation in which, due to limited law enforcement resources and political constraints, some people are made criminals while others are not. Black people have been made criminals by the War on Drugs to a degree that dwarfs its effect on other racial and ethnic groups, especially whites. And the process of making them criminals has produced racial stigma. ~ Michelle Alexander

Drugs flow as effortlessly through the harbour as through los esteros, but the government and the DEA view drug trafficking as more of a hazard to society when it moves through the poor area, with its dirty waters and seeming chaos, than when it has to do with corporate boardrooms and the main harbour. And for the FARC, it is becoming easier and easier to convince the city's Afro-Colombian majority that the focus of the war on drugs is not primarily on the flow of drugs, but on what kind of people are involved in it. ~ Magnus Linton

We won't win until the average parent believes drug reform protects kids better than the war on drugs. ~ Ethan Nadelmann

The Drug War is an addiction, really. ~ Bill Maher

There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action. ~ Bertrand Russell

There is no need for propaganda to be rich in intellectual content. ~ Joseph Goebbels

EIGHTH AMENDMENT
The government shall not "crack down" on drug crime while taking kickbacks from industries and companies perpetuating addiction and abuse. You can't fight wars on drugs - only on people. The drug war kills people, not drugs. Anytime you hear a politician talk about being tough on drugs but then say nothing about pharmaceutical companies, doctors, or insurance providers needing reform as well, you call them what they are: hacks. And hit them in the fa - we mean, vote against them. ~ Trae Crowder

The war on drugs is being lost on a daily basis. ~ Rhys Ifans

Prohibition kills, education saves lives ~ Dominic Milton Trott

While we have driven out other Nazi verbal monstrosities, the terminology of the war on drugs has lingered. It's no longer a matter of Jews - the dangerous dealers are now said to be part of different cultural circles. ~ Norman Ohler

The opposite of addiction is human connection. And I think that has massive implications for the war on drugs. The treatment of drug addicts almost everywhere in the world is much closer to Tent City than it is to anything in Portugal. Our laws are built around the belief that drug addicts need to be punished to stop them. But if pain and trauma and isolation cause addiction, then inflicting more pain and trauma and isolation is not going to solve that addiction. It's actually going to deepen it. ~ Johann Hari

The war on drugs is a war against the communities. ~ Holly Near

Police often think of themselves as soldiers in a battle with the public rather than guardians of public safety. That they are provided with tanks and other military-grade weapons, that many are military veterans, and that militarized units like Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) proliferated during the 1980s War on Drugs and post-9/11 War on Terror only fuels this perception, as well as a belief that entire communities are disorderly, dangerous, suspicious, and ultimately criminal. When this happens, police are too quick to use force. ~ Alex S. Vitale

The enduring racial isolation of the ghetto poor has made them uniquely vulnerable in the War on Drugs. What happens to them does not directly affect - and is scarcely noticed by - the privileged beyond the ghetto's invisible walls. ~ Michelle Alexander

Instead of war on poverty,
they got a war on drugs so the police can bother me. ~ Tupac Shakur

Although a million black men can be found in prisons and jails, public acknowledgment of the role of the criminal justice system in "disappearing" black men is surprisingly rare. ... Hundreds of thousands of black men are unable to be good fathers for their children, not because of a lack of commitment or desire but because they are warehoused in prisons, locked in cages. They did not walk out on their families voluntarily; they were taken away in handcuffs, often due to a massive federal program known as the War on Drugs. ~ Michelle Alexander

The War on Drugs and the War on Homelessness are on a collision course that no one in the media or in public life are willing to acknowledge. Ostensibly aimed at decreasing the use of illegal drugs, the War on Drugs succeeds only in increasing homelessness. ~ Thomas Szasz

To stop the drug traffic is not the best way to prevent people from using drugs. The best way is to practice the Fifth Precept and to help others practice. Consuming mindfully is the intelligent way to stop ingesting toxins into our consciousness and prevent the malaise from becoming overwhelming. Learning the art of touching and ingesting refreshing, nourishing, and healing elements is the way to restore our balance and transform the pain and loneliness that are already in us. To do this, we have to practice together. The practice of mindful consuming should become a national policy. It should be considered true peace education ... Those who are destroying themselves, their families, and their society by intoxicating themselves are not doing it intentionally. Their pain and loneliness are overwhelming, and they want to escape. They need to be helped, not punished. Only understanding and compassion on a collective level can liberate us (78-79). ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Art can't decide whether the War on Drugs is an obscene absurdity or an absurd obscenity. In either case, it's a tragic, bloody farce. ~ Don Winslow

Billions of dollars, trying unsuccessfully to keep drugs out of the world's most porous border? One-tenth of the anti-drug budget going into education and treatment, nine-tenths of those billions into interdiction? And not enough money from anywhere going into the root causes of the drug problem itself. And the billions spent keeping drug offenders locked up in prison, the cells now so crowded we have to give early release to murderers. Not to mention the fact that two-thirds of all the "non-drug" offenses in America are committed by people high on dope or alcohol. And our solutions are the same futile non-solutions - build more prisons, hire more police, spend more and more billions of dollars not curing the symptoms while we ignore the disease. Most people in my area who want to kick drugs can't afford to get into a treatment program unless they have blue-chip health insurance, which most of them don't. And there's a six-month-to-two-year waiting list to get a bed in a subsidized treatment program. We're spending almost $2 billion poisoning cocaine crops and kids over here, while there's no money at home to help someone who wants to get off drugs. It's insanity. ~ Don Winslow

Although crack cocaine had not yet hit the streets when the War on Drugs was declared in 1982, its appearance a few years later created the perfect opportunity for the Reagan administration to build support for its new war. Drug use, once considered a private, public-health matter, was reframed through political rhetoric and media imagery as a grave threat to the national order. ~ Michelle Alexander

At a time when the current and two former US presidents have admittedly indulged, as have politicians of all stripes from Al Gore to Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin and over 50% of the adult US population, the credibility tipping point of the War on Drugs propaganda has long been passed. All that appears to be missing is the political courage to admit failure and move on to more realistic and efficient policies. What will it take for decision makers to display the wisdom and garner the courage to end the disastrous War on Drugs and responsibly take charge of drug production and trade instead of leaving it in the hands of extremely dangerous and powerful international criminal organizations? ~ Jeffrey Dhywood

In fact, most of what they're calling crime is a kid caught with a joint in his pocket. Why do people think of that as the problem? ~ Noam Chomsky

No matter what federal program one selects - Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the drug war, the income tax and the IRS, education, foreign interventions and wars - they are all a giant mess. ~ Jacob G. Hornberger

Having grown up in Oklahoma when it was one of the last states which prohibited liquor, I grew up with War On Drugs, where every teenager knew who the bootleggers were. ~ Tony Hillerman

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

What's on the outside to prevent their return? They are now convicted felons, a branding they will never be able to shake. The odds were stacked against them to begin with, and now that they're tagged as felons, life in the free world is somehow supposed to improve? These are the real casualties of our wars. The war on drugs. The war on crime. Unintended victims of tough laws passed by tough politicians over the past forty years. One million young black men now warehoused in decaying prisons, idling away the days at taxpayer expense. Our prisons are packed. Our streets are filled with drugs. Who's winning the war? ~ John Grisham

We cannot incarcerate ourselves out of addiction. Addiction is a medical crisis that - when it comes to nonviolent offenders - warrants medical interventions, not incarceration. Decades later, data unequivocally illustrates that this war has been a massive failure. It has not only failed to reduce violent crime, but arrest rates - throughout its tenure - have continuously ascended even when crime rates have descended. ~ Dominique DuBois Gilliard

The fact that war is the word we use for almost everything - on terrorism, drugs, even poverty - has certainly helped to desensitize us to its invocation; if we wage wars on everything, how bad can they be? ~ Glenn Greenwald

The war on drugs is really the war on people who buy drugs from people who don't lobby the government. ~ Stefan Molyneux

I'm actually not in favour of decriminalizing cannabis
I'm in favour of legalizing it. Tax and regulate. It's one of the only ways to keep it out of the hands of our kids because the current war on drugs, the current model isn't working, ~ Justin Trudeau

While many have depicted the War on Drugs as a Republican initiative, the drug war was a bipartisan effort. This rhetoric of law and
order deployed by politicians won elections nationwide, from races for local council seats to the presidency. ~ Dominique DuBois Gilliard

Look at all the drug busts all over the country. There must be an audience there somewhere. My feeling is that if we're losing the war on drugs, let's do a movie for the enemy. ~ Tommy Chong

No-knock police raids destroy Americans' right to privacy and safety. People's lives are being ruined or ended as a result of unsubstantiated assertions by anonymous government informants ... Unfortunately, no-knock raids are becoming more common as federal, state, and local politicians and law enforcement agencies decide that the war on drugs justified nullifying the Fourth Amendment ... No-knock raids in response to alleged narcotics violations presume that the government should have practically unlimited power to endanger some people's lives in order to control what others ingest. ~ James Bovard

Before the war on drugs, the war on terror, or the war on cancer, there was the war on female sexual desire. It's a war that has been raging far longer than any other, and its victims number well into the billions by now. Like the others, it's a war that can never be won, as the declared enemy is a force of nature. We may as well declare war on the cycles of the moon. ~ Christopher Ryan

Right here, in this same headquarters, 52 years ago, the Convention that gave the birth certificate to the war on drugs was approved ~ Juan Manuel Santos

The first casualty of war is truth, and the war on drugs is no different ~ Dominic Milton Trott

The War on Drugs, from the Hastings-facing window of the Portland
Hotel, is manifested in the pregnant Celia kneeling on the sidewalk,
handcuffed wrists behind her back, eyes cast on the ground. There
was no Detective-Sergeant Gillespie to protect her when, as a little
girl, she was raped by her stepfather and subjected to the nocturnal
spitting ritual, so in the War on Drugs she has become one of the
enemy. ~ Gabor Mate

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

It's not a war on drugs, it's a war on personal freedom. ~ Bill Hicks

It is of the nature of war to increase the executive at the expense of legislative authority," the Federalist tell us. And modern commanders in chief tend to reflexively invoke the war metaphor when the public demands that they take action to solve the emergency of the month, real or imagined.

"War is the health of the state," Randolph Bourne's famous aphorism has it, but Bourne could just as easily written that "war is the health of the presidency." Throughout American history, virtually every major advance in executive power has come during a war or warlike crisis. Convince the public that we are at war, and constitutional barriers to actions fall, as power flows to the commander in chief.

Little wonder, then, that confronted with impossible expectations, the modern president tends to recast social and economic problems in military terms: war on crime, war on drugs, war on poverty. Martial rhetoric often ushers in domestic militarism, as presidents push to employ standing armies at home, to fight drug trafficking, terrorism, or natural disasters. And when the president raises the battle cry, he can usually count on substantial numbers of American opinion leaders to cheer him on. ~ Gene Healy

We know nothing of what will happen in future, but by the analogy of experience. ~ Abraham Lincoln

The drug war is a holocaust in slow motion. ~ David Simon

Nothing has contributed more to the systematic mass incarceration of people of color in the United States than the War on Drugs ~ Michelle Alexander

I'm finding myself really angry over spending and the deficit. I'm finding myself really angry over what's happening in the Middle East, the decision to stay in Afghanistan indefinitely. I'm angry about cap and trade. And I've been on record for a long time on the failed war on drugs. ~ Gary Johnson

In 1970, there were approximately 330,000 prisoners in the US. Today there are 2.3 million behind bars - more than any country in the history of the world. In 2009 alone there were 1.6 million drug-related arrests in the U.S. 1.3 million of these were for possession of drugs alone. Over half were related to marijuana. The forty-year war on drugs has cost $2.5 trillion. ~ Sam Branson

New Mexico Governor Gary E. Johnson, a Republican and tri-athlete, has stated publicly that "Our present course is not working. Our War on Drugs is a real failure. ~ James P. Gray

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

The line in the sand that Carter drew along Iran's Zagros Mountains now stretches from Central Asia through the Middle East and across the width of Africa. That the ongoing enterprise may someday end - that U.S. troops will finally depart - appears so unlikely as to make the prospect unworthy of discussion. Like the war on drugs or the war on poverty, the War for the Greater Middle East has become a permanent fixture in American life and is accepted as such. ~ Andrew J. Bacevich

The same drug that had been considered fearsome twenty years earlier, when associated with African Americans and Latinos, was refashioned as a relatively harmless drug when associated with whites. ~ Michelle Alexander

The drug education currently provided broadly amounts to 'take drugs and you will die'. This lie is so obvious that no-one takes it seriously. ~ Dominic Milton Trott

Because of the war on drugs, pain patients are treated with skepticism and pain doctors live in fear of being prosecuted for overprescribing. The end result is that addicts still get their opioids without much trouble, while genuine patients often can't find treatment. Those who do must typically be tracked in a database and must schedule frequent, expensive doctor visits for surveillance like urine testing. ~ Maia Szalavitz

To understand the future course of this war, one need only look at the history of the War on Drugs and the War on Terror. Like those two manufactured "wars", this one will be never-ending, freedom-destroying, counterproductive, and ultimately understood to have caused far more damage than the supposed threat it was aimed at ever could have. ~ Ramez Naam

I found that I was getting a warm reception for my message of freeing you from the income tax, releasing you from Social Security, ending the insane war on drugs, restoring gun rights, and reducing the federal government to just its constitutional functions. ~ Harry Browne

Media censorship is a prohibition of words and pictures. The war on drugs is a complete failure, and so is the American war on words. When you forbid a word, you give it power. Self-proclaimed rebels will use words like shit or fuck, simply to shock and sound cool. ~ Oliver Markus

President Reagan officially announced his administration's War on Drugs. At the time...less than 2 percent of the American public viewed drugs as the most important issue facing the nation. This fact was no deterrent to Reagan, for the drug war from the outset had little to do with public concern about drugs and much to do with public concern about race. ~ Michelle Alexander

We have a problem with drugs? Let's declare war on drugs! We have a problem with crime? Let's declare war on crime! We have a problem with violence? Let's declare war on violence! The deeply ingrained American attitude that we can solve any problem w/enough force creates, feeds, & rewards the epidemic of violence we are currently experiencing. ~ Peter McWilliams

The war on drugs is what makes thugs. ~ John McWhorter

I actually took them all on quite handily, although I learned when I came to study the issue that I was completely wrong. I also came to believe that the war on drugs is one of the last vestiges of institutionalized racism in our society. ~ Harvey Pekar

This is not a war on drugs. This is a war on the poor. This is a war on the poor and the powerless, the voiceless and the invisible, ~ Don Winslow

So just take a look at the different prosecution rates and sentencing rules for ghetto drugs like crack and suburban drugs like cocaine, or for drunk drivers and drug users, or just between blacks and whites in general―the statistics are clear: this is a war on the poor and minorities. Or ask yourself a simple question: how come marijuana is illegal but tobacco legal? It can't be because of the health impact, because that's exactly the other way around―there has never been a fatality from marijuana use among million reported users in the United States, whereas tobacco kills hundreds of thousands of people every year. My strong suspicion, though I don't know how to prove it, is that the reason is that marijuana's a weed, you can grow it in your backyard, so there's nobody who would make any money off it if it were legal. Tobacco requires extensive capital inputs and technology, and it can be monopolized, so there are people who can make a ton of money off it. I don't really see any other difference between the two of them, frankly―except that tobacco's far more lethal and far more addictive. ~ Noam Chomsky

I'm sad to see the passing of the great drug warriors. I certainly did my part in that battle and I don't regret any of it. ~ Marc Maron

I think it is now widely understood that the so-called "War on Drugs" has largely been a failure. Too many people have developed criminal records for smoking marijuana. Too many people have gone to jail for nonviolent crimes. So I think it's important for us to rethink the war on drugs. ~ Bernie Sanders

The war on drugs is really no war at all - it's a business! ~ Jerry Brown

Reagan's promise to enhance the federal government's role in fighting crime was complicated by the fact that fighting street crime has traditionally been the responsibility of state and local law enforcement. After a period of initial confusion and controversy...the Justice Department announced its intention to cut in half the number of specialists assigned to identify and prosecute white collar criminals and to shift its attention to street crime, especially drug-law enforcement. ~ Michelle Alexander

The story is complicated and contradictory. Sometimes this proclaimed 'war on drugs' has followed shifts in military threats; at times it is coloured by religious paranoia; often it is rooted in genuine fear of widespread social misery. But mostly, and sometimes quite unintentionally, it is the result of political strategies that have very little to do with its expressed goal of fighting drugs. ~ Magnus Linton

[T]ake the war on drugs. The average American says, "The war on drugs has been beneficial." The rest of us see reality. This war has destroyed thousands of Americans. It is also a pretext for government agents to rob innocent people in airports and on the highways - they seize and confiscate large amounts of cash and say to their victims: "Sue us if you don't like it." And more and more judges, politicians, intelligence agents, and law-enforcement officers are on the take - as dependent on the drug-war largess as the drug lords themselves. ~ Jacob G. Hornberger

So when I say we had been the cowards, yes, that's what I meant, we as a society. And that's everybody, including myself. I had been screaming about the drug war and this war and other wars. I should have been more on terrorism, too. So should you, so should everybody. ~ Bill Maher

Geopolitical interests are behind the so-called war on drugs and terrorism. ~ Evo Morales

But anyone who believes in the war on drugs is missing a crucial point as to why the war can never be won. Feeling good will never go out of style. ~ Ryan Vanderford

Marijuana legalization's income may help fund education, prevention and treatment programs for harder drugs. What's clear is that the four-decade-old U.S.-backed war on drugs is not working, and that it's producing tens of thousands of dead across the hemisphere, without significant gains in reducing consumption. Experimenting with new weapons to weaken the cartels may be better than doing nothing. ~ Andres Oppenheimer

That's what I hate about the war on drugs. All day long we see those commercials: "Here's your brain, here's your brain on drugs", "Just Say No", "Why do you think they call it dope?" ... And
then the next commercial is [singing] "This Bud's for yooouuuu." C'mon, everybody, let's be hypocritical bastards. It's okay to drink your drug. We meant those other drugs. Those untaxed
drugs. Those are the ones that are bad for you. ~ Bill Hicks

The war on drugs to me is absolutely phoney, its so obviously phoney, ok? It's a war against our civil rights, that's all it is. They're using it to make us afraid to go out at night, afraid of each other, so that we lock ourselves in our homes and they get suspending our rights one by one. ~ Bill Hicks

The entire American media apparatus bought into the drug war - which is an enormously damaging and costly undertaking for this country - and there wasn't enough critical reporting about it and that's why it's gotten out of hand. ~ David Talbot

In the cloudy swirl of misleading ideas surrounding public discussion of addiction, there's one that stands out: the misconception that drug taking by itself will lead to addiction - in other words, that the cause of addiction resides in the power of the drug over the human brain. It is one of the bedrock fables sustaining the so-called War on Drugs. ~ Gabor Mate

The war on drugs has failed in West Africa and around the world ~ Kofi Annan

The big lock-up is about drugs. Here's the real scam. The drug war is one of the games to get more convictions and prisoners. ~ Jerry Brown

In a free society, how can you commit a crime against yourself? ~ Jesse Ventura

Jim Crow and mass incarceration have similar political origins...both caste systems were born in part, due to desire among white elites to exploit the resentments, vulnerabilities and racial biases of poor and working-class whites for political or economic gain. Segregation laws were proposed as part of a deliberate and strategic effort to deflect anger and hostility that have been brewing against the white elite away from them and toward African Americans. The birth of mass incarceration can be traced to a similar political dynamic. Conservatives in the 1960s and 1970s sought to appeal to the racial biases and economic vulnerabilities of poor and working-class whites through racially coded rhetoric on crime and welfare. In both cases, the racial opportunists offered few, if any, economic reforms to address the legitimate economic anxieties of poor and working-class whites, proposing instead a crackdown on the racially defined "others." In the early years of Jim Crow, conservative white elites competed with each other by passing ever more stringent and oppressive Jim Crow legislation. A century later, politicians in the early years of the drug war competed with each other to prove who could be tougher on crime by passing ever harsher drug laws- a thinly veiled effort to appeal to poor and working-class whites who, once again, proved they were willing to forego economic and structural reform in exchange for an apparent effort to put blacks back "in their place. ~ Michelle Alexander

The critical point is that thousands of people are swept into the criminal justice system every year pursuant to the drug war without much regard for their guilt or innocence. The police are allowed by the courts to conduct fishing expeditions for drugs on the streets and freeways based on nothing more than a hunch...and once inside the system, people are often denied attorneys or meaningful representation and pressured into plea bargains by the threat of unbelievably harsh sentences - sentences for minor drug crimes that are higher than many countries impose on convicted murderers. This is the way the roundup works, and it works this way in virtually every major city in the United States. ~ Michelle Alexander

But now and then liberty, in the slogans of the strong, means freedom from restraint in the exploitation of the weak. ~ Will Durant

Our biggest art forms are film and television, and there hasn't been a great film about 9/11 yet, nor has there been a great television series. Something like The Wire gives us a rich and fully achieved picture of the wasteful, cruel War on Drugs; something like The White Ribbon gives a perspective on World War I that could only have been presented long after the event itself. ~ Teju Cole

Too many Americans have lost faith in our approach to the war on drugs ... ~ Gary Johnson

I was trying in 'The Power of the Dog' to write a brutally accurate in-your-face, if you will, description of 30 years in the war on drugs. And the effect that that had on people. ~ Don Winslow

We wouldn't have much need of a war if people stopped using drugs. It's like taking up a fight against the use of headache remedies; it will never work until the condition causing people's headache pain is healed. ~ Chris Prentiss

We are losing the 'War on Drugs,' which means there's a war going on and people on drugs are winning it. ~ Bill Hicks

Turner [Reagan's "drug czar'] was especially determined to purge psychiatrists from federal drug agencies. "They're trained to treat," he said, "and treatment isn't what we do." Methadone was out, so Turner blocked advocates of the treatment who were still in the federal government from speaking about it publicly. ~ Radley Balko

The United States is using its war on drugs as an excuse to expand its control over Latin America. ~ Evo Morales

To hold sovereign and exclusive ownership of one's own conscious mind, to explore freely and without boundary, is surely the most fundamental of human rights. Third party intrusion into this wholly personal territory is a grievous breach of this inalienable freedom. ~ Dominic Milton Trott