Drug Prohibition Quotes

#1. 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.

Drew Carey

#2. Drug prohibition has caused gang warfare and other violent crimes by raising the prices of drugs so much that vicious criminals enter the market to make astronomical profits, and addicts rob and steal to get money to pay the inflated prices for their drugs.

Michael Badnarik

#3. For anybody who suspects that we need to reform the drug laws, there is an easier argument to make, and a harder argument to make. The easier argument is to say that we all agree drugs are bad - it's just that drug prohibition is even worse.

Johann Hari

#4. If even a small fraction of the money we now spend on trying to enforce drug prohibition were devoted to treatment and drug rehabilitation, in an atmosphere of compassion not punishment, the reduction in drug usage and in the harm done to users could be dramatic.

Milton Friedman

#5. 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.

James Carriger Paine

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

Ron Paul

#7. A drug is neither moral nor immoral - it's a chemical compound. The compound itself is not a menace to society until a human being treats it as if consumption bestowed a temporary license to act like an asshole.

Frank Zappa

#8. It is impossible to tell whether prohibition is a good thing or a bad thing. It has never been enforced in this country.

Fiorello H. La Guardia

#9. If every door you knock on doesn't open, it's time to build your own.

Matshona Dhliwayo

#10. The current prohibition laws are forcing drug disputes to be played out with guns in our streets. We need to put a stop to this criminal drug element in our country.

Gary Johnson

#11. The quickest way to get over something you loved and lost is to get another one.

Karen Tenerowicz

#12. I was brought up with a whole bunch of cousins in the Wye Valley during the hippy days of the 1970s.

Saul David

#13. One role of prohibition is in making the drug market more lucrative.

Milton Friedman

#14. It is an axiom, enforced by all the experience of the ages, that they who rule industrially will rule politically.

Aneurin Bevan

#15. Drugs are a tragedy for addicts. But criminalizing their use converts that tragedy into a disaster for society, for users and non-users alike. Our experience with the prohibition of drugs is a replay of our experience with the prohibition of alcoholic beverages.

Milton Friedman

#16. In the 1920s, we thought the problems associated with alcohol could be solved by police and jails. Prohibition taught us we were wrong. The strategy of the present drug war is Prohibition redux.

Rodney S. Quinn

#17. There are criminals who are drug users, but most addicts are criminals only by virtue of prohibition or from resorting to crime to pay inflated black market prices.

Danny Sugerman

#18. Between the theories and your life, choose your life.

Marty Rubin

#19. The prohibition of drugs causes crime. You don't have to legalize, just decriminalize it.

Jesse Ventura