George McGovern Quotes

The war on drugs has gone on for about forty-five, fifty years - and it's been a complete failure. If you had a business that was failing so badly, you would change course. And it's just incredible that governments continue along the same course.

Prohibition is an attempted cure that makes matters worse - for both the addict and the rest of us.

The War on Drugs has been an utter failure. We need to rethink and decriminalize our marijuana laws.

The Drug War is an addiction, really.

Too many Americans have lost faith in our approach to the war on drugs.

The bigger picture is that over the last 30 years, we have spent $1 trillion waging a drug war that has failed in any meaningful way to reduce drug addiction or abuse, and yet has siphoned an enormous amount of resources away from other public services, especially education.

Just plain logic says that the war on drugs does not work. It absolutely does not work. We have this highly addictive legal drug called tobacco which has never resulted in people being sent to prison, but there has been a massive reduction in its consumption simply because responsible adults looking at their own bodies have said they don't want to do that to themselves.

Annual drug deaths: tobacco: 395,000, alcohol: 125,000, 'legal' drugs: 38,000, illegal drug overdoses: 5,200, marijuana: 0. Considering government subsidies of tobacco, just what is our government protecting us from in the drug war?

"I think decriminalization would've been a wiser first step."

For the past several years, the Meth Caucus has worked to engage the Office of National Drug Control Policy on this issue. We have tried to get their attention that meth requires a strong, comprehensive Federal policy.

The war on meth must be fought with a multi-pronged approach.

People have started to see that 'smart on crime' rather than 'tough on crime' makes sense.

The war on drugs is a war against the communities.

If grass were legalized, it would help our drug problem enormously.

The Drug War is probably the worst scourge that has ever been visited upon this country.

To become a narcotic addict is an anti-social act and the foundation of countermeasures against addiction is to treat and rehabilitate addicts.

Certainly our democracy is not going to fall if you legalize marijuana.

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.

I can officially state that my government and myself believe that all over Europe we need to open a debate on the 'drug question' in order to create more coherent and human policies with better perspectives. . . . The policy of criminalizing consumers has failed, creating many problems to our society.

What drugs have not destroyed, the war on them has

We should decriminalize all drugs. The assumptions on which our drug policies are based are flawed.

I'm actually not in favour of decriminalizing cannabis - I'm in favour of legalizing it. Tax and regulate. It's one of the only ways to keep it out of the hands of our kids because the current war on drugs, the current model isn't working.

Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself

If ur going to have a war on drugs, have them against ALL drugs, including alcohol, the number one offender.

We won't dispassionately investigate or rationally debate which drugs do what damage and whether or how much of that damage is the result of criminalization. We'd rather work ourselves into a screaming fit of puritanism and then go home and take a pill.