John Lehman Quotes

The country is being flooded with illegal liquor and that either Congress will need to modify the law or spend incalculable sums to enforce it [Prohibition].

When I sell liquor, it's called bootlegging; when my patrons serve it on Lake Shore Drive, it's called hospitality.

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

Prohibition? I drink to its health whenever I can.

Liquor - you can make it illegal but you can't make it unpopular.

Prohibition has made nothing but trouble.

When Prohibition was first enacted in 1920, most people stockpiled alcohol, thinking they'd have enough to last them for years. By 1923, that was starting to run out, so your average person started to rely more and more on criminals.

Prohibition begets proliferation

Prohibition created more drunks than anything else.

[Describing Prohibition:] Politicians are ducking, candidates are hedging, the Anti-Saloon League is prospering, people are being poisoned, bootleggers are being enriched, and Government officials are being corrupted.

Prohibition is a Constitutional mandate and I hold it absolutely necessary to give it a fair and thorough trial.

The saloon is as dead as slavery.

Prohibition is an awful flop. We like it. It can't stop what it's meant to stop. We like it. It's left a trail of graft and slime, It don't prohibit worth a dime, It's filled our land with vice and crime. Nevertheless, we're for it.

I believe I've always been so successful on the black market for a lot of different reasons.

Bootleggers quake in fear of me ringing them on a Sunday afternoon. I call after dinner, usually.

In fact, the whole thing about prohibition is this: it isn't the initial cost, it's the humidity.

Prohibition makes you want to cry into your beer and denies you the beer to cry into.

In the domain of cops and robbers, an interdiction serves to structure a black market and a shadow economy.

Prohibition is better than no liquor at all.

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.

This day we have held a council, and it is agreed by the Shawnee in general that whatever rum is in our towns shall be broke and split and not drunk; and whosoever shall bring any rum or any sort of strong drink into our towns, Indian or white man, let it be little or much, it shall be broke or split in the presence of the whole town…

Everybody calls me a racketeer. I call myself a business man. When I sell liquor, it's bootlegging. When my patrons serve it on a silver tray on Lake Shore Drive [in Chicago] it's hospitality.

We advocate the repeal of the 18th Amendment.

Opium has a harm. Opium is a poison, undermining our good customs and morality. It is prohibited by law. However, recently the purchasers, eaters, and consumers of opium have become numerous. Deceitful merchants buy and sell it to gain profit. … If we confine our search for opium to the seaports, we fear the search will not be sufficiently thorough. We should also order the general commandant of the police and police - censors at the five gates to prohibit opium and to search for it at all gates. If they capture any violators, they should immediately punish them and should destroy the opium at once. As to Kwangtung and Fukien, the provinces from which opium comes, we order their viceroys, governors, and superintendents of the maritime customs to conduct a thorough search for opium, and cut off its supply. They should in no way … allow opium to be smuggled out.

Letting states legalize marijuana would free federal law enforcement resources for the more urgent tasks of thwarting, apprehending, and prosecuting international terrorists or murderers... As a matter of States' rights, regulating marijuana and alcohol seem indistinguishable; and, alcohol policy has been entrusted to the States since the repeal of Prohibition in 1933