#prohibition

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

#caffeine #coffee #drug-user #drugs #legalization

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

#civil-rights #drug-laws #drugs #marijuana #prohibition

Nothing optional—from homosexuality to adultery—is ever made punishable unless those who do the prohibiting (and exact the fierce punishments) have a repressed desire to participate. As Shakespeare put it in King Lear, the policeman who lashes the whore has a hot need to use her for the very offense for which he plies the lash. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#closeted #homosexuality #hypocrisy #prohibition #religion

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

#caused #crimes #criminals #enter #gang

We find many things to which the prohibition of them constitutes the only temptation. ↗

— William Hazlitt

#find #many #only #prohibition #temptation

Prohibition has made nothing but trouble. ↗

— Al Capone

#nothing #prohibition #trouble

Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water. ↗

— W. C. Fields

#days #during #forced #i #live

But the worst handicap we had the prohibition of naming individual units who had done the fighting. ↗

— Philip Gibbs

#fighting #had #handicap #individual #naming

Regardless of what one's attitude towards prohibition may be, temperance is something against which, at a time of war, no reasonable protest can be made. ↗

— William Lyon Mackenzie King

#attitude #made #may #prohibition #protest

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 marijuana 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 [28g] of marijuana. ↗

— Jimmy Carter

#drugs #law #marijuana #police #prohibition