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"Everything in moderation, including moderation."
Mark Twain
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"Distrust all men in whom the impulse to punish is strong."
Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher
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"Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance.
It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it 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."
Abraham Lincoln (1809-65), U.S. President.
Speech, 18 Dec. 1840, to Illinois House of Representatives
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"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."
Albert Einstein,
"My First Impression of the U.S.A.", 1921
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"Our youth can not understand why society chooses to criminalize
a behavior with so little visible ill effect or adverse social
impact... These young people have jumped the fence and found
no cliff. And the disrespect for the possession laws fosters
a disrespect for laws and the system in general... On top of this
is the distinct impression among the youth that some police may
use the marihuana laws to arrest people they don't like for other
reasons, whether it be their politics, their hair style or their
ethnic background."
"Federal and state laws (should) be changed to no longer make it
a crime to possess marijuana for private use."
"State laws should make the public use of marijuana a criminal
offense punishable by a $100 fine. Under federal law, marijuana
smoked in public would merely be subject to seizure."
President Richard M. Nixon's
National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse
Marihuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding, March 1972
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"Criminal penalties have clearly failed to prevent widespread
use of marijuana... Law and health are two entirely separate
issues."
National Institute on Drug Abuse director Bob DuPont,
President Nixon's 'drug czar', at 1974 NORML annual conference
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"Congress should definitely consider decriminalizing possession
of marijuana... We should concentrate on prosecuting the rapists
and burglars who are a menace to society."
U.S. Representative Dan Quayle, March 1977
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"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 marihuana
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 of marihuana."
U.S. President Jimmy Carter, message to congress, 1977
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"The existing evidence on policies of partial prohibition [decriminalization]
indicates that partial prohibition has been as effective in controlling
consumption as complete prohibition and has entailed considerably smaller
social, legal, and economic costs. On balance, therefore, we believe that
a policy of partial prohibition is clearly preferable to a policy of
complete prohibition of supply and use.
We believe, further) that current policies directed at controlling the
supply of marijuana should be seriously reconsidered. The demonstrated
ineffectiveness of control of use through prohibition of supply and the
high costs of implementing such a policy make it very unlikely that any
kind of partial prohibition policy will be effective in reducing marijuana
use significantly below present levels. (...) Hence, a variety of
alternative policies should be considered."
An Analysis of Marijuana Policy
National Research Council of the National Academy of Science, 1982
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"The amount of money and of legal energy being given to prosecute
hundreds of thousands of Americans who are caught with a few
ounces of marijuana in their jeans simply makes no sense - the
kindest way to put it. A sterner way to put it is that it is an
outrage, an imposition on basic civil liberties and on the
reasonable expenditure of social energy."
William F. Buckley:
Legalization of Marijuana Long Overdue
in The Albuquerque Journal, June 8, 1993
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"So long as large sums of money are involved - and they are bound
to be if drugs are illegal - it is literally impossible to stop
the traffic, or even to make a serious reduction in its scope."
"Our emphasis here is based not only on the growing seriousness of
drug-related crimes, but also on the belief that relieving our
police and our courts from having to fight losing battles against
drugs will enable their energies and facilities to be devoted more
fully to combatting other forms of crime. We would thus strike a
double blow: reduce crime activity directly, and at the same time
increase the efficacy of law enforcement and crime prevention."
Nobel laureate
Milton Friedman in "Tyranny of the Status Quo"
(Friedman, along with Keynes, is considered one of the two most
influential economists of the 20th century.)
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"Western governments ... will lose the war against dealers
unless efforts are switched to prevention and therapy...
All penalties for drug users should be dropped ...
Making drug abuse a crime is useless and even dangerous ...
Every year we seize more and more drugs and arrest more and
more dealers but at the same time the quantity available in our
countries still increases... Police are losing the drug battle worldwide."
Raymond Kendall, secretary general of INTERPOL, January 1994
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"I support decriminalization. People are smoking pot anyway and
to make them criminal is wrong."
Sir Paul McCartney, September 1997
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"When we look down the road, I would say 10, 15, 20 years from now, in a
gradual fashion, smoking will probably be outlawed in the United States."
Tom Constantine, Administrator of the DEA in an
interview with ABC
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"You’re asking the government to control individual morality.
This is a government that can’t buy a toilet seat for under $600."
Peter McWilliams, Author of "Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do"
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Joe Wein's hemp page