Marvin Henry “Mickey” Edwards Quotes

Until we do something about demand, Latin America will never be able to solve the drug problem on its own.

The war on drugs is being lost on a daily basis.

I loved when Bush came out and said, 'We are losing the war against drugs.' You know what that implies? There's a war being fought, and the people on drugs are winning it.

Not since the collapse of the attempt to prohibit the ingestion of alcohol has our liberty been in such danger as it now is from the misnamed “war on drugs.”

There isn't any way to keep drugs out of this country.

Drug prohibition enriches criminals and creates an artificially inflated price that lures young people into the drug trade.... We have created a drug exception to the Constitution.

We've been fighting this war on drugs for 60 or 70 years and haven't gotten anywhere yet.

[Referring to the Congress:] They're trying to outdrug each other. Each one wants to seem tougher on drugs than the next one.

We are never going to lick this problem of the drug traffic until we get the addicts off the streets of this country. They have got to be taken off the streets

Your Majesty has not before been thus officially notified, and you may plead ignorance of the severity of our laws, but I now give my assurance that we mean to cut this harmful drug forever.

Narcotics suppression is a very sexy political issue.

We need to repeal the whole war on drugs. It isn’t working. We have already spent over $400 billion since the early 1970s, and it is wasted money

The war on drugs has failed. Its failure has been so categorical and self-evident that the statement itself is bromidic. By any reasonable metric of success—addiction rates, violence, the availability of drugs in our schools— it’s clear that our 40-year jihad against certain plants and chemicals has done far more harm than good.

The problem of drugs is a national failure. We do not grow cocoa leaves in Albany.

The war on drugs is a joke. We spend $40 billion a year, and the proof that it's a failure is that any kid can get almost any drug they want in any city in America within half an hour.

With respect to drugs, you know, there are a lot of organizations, including an enormous budget and an army at the federal government level that tries to deal with the drug problem.

The fight against the drug smuggling is lost worldwide.

We have not won the battle against drug trafficking.

Plan Colombia was supposed to reduce Colombia's cultivation and distribution of drugs by 50 percent, but 6 years and $4.7 billion later, the drug control results are meager at best.

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.

The military is afraid to get into this war [on drugs] because it's a tough one.

The war on drugs is all about money and power, the money and power of politicians, bureaucrats, police and drug dealers.

Should someone go to jail for just doing drugs? I believe the time has come for that to end.

Agitating the community and increasingly forcing itself upon our attention is the narcotic drug evil. I am convinced that part of the agitation on this subject is due to the sensationalism of certain types of newspapers and magazines. Lurid, sensational articles, intended to inflame the imagination of young people and to make the whole subject mysteriously and morbidly attractive, have led to the prevalence of a belief that the use of narcotic drugs is much more general than it really is.

Why attempt to keep drugs out of the country, or prevent them from being sold? After all, police can't be everywhere at once. Since choices have to be made, it will be tempting to let the drug trade proceed unmolested, then just go after the cash.