Robert Du Pont Quotes
Marijuana doesn’t produce dependence and it doesn’t produce overdose deaths.
Robert Du Pont, Physician and Drug Advisor to President Nixon, Quoted on The History Channel, History of Drugs, December 31, 2005
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Hearst personally wrote all the anti-drug editorials of his newspapers.
This type of statement made by otherwise respectable government officials has developed a view on the part of many Americans that the Government lies about marijuana. See {617560} and {593333} .
Marijuana was and still is a health and social problem in that people who tend to use it---especially young people---tend not to focus on their friendships, their work and study obligations, their own development and welfare. However it is nowhere near the degree of deleterious problems of alcohol and other drugs like heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine. There is no record of anyone dying from an over dose or marijuana while alcohol and other drugs kill hundreds if not thousands a year. But none of those health emergencies compare with the flu which each year kills over 20,000 Americans who do not get inoculations or highway crashes which kill about 50,000. Yet Nixon did not characterize these as “national emergencies.”
The "Formula" was to legalize all drugs, This would break the Drug Cartels and the power they held in Mexico, The money that could be saved from the failing drug law enforcement could be spsent on substance abuse prevention and treatment. He also felt that government should not intude on personal life style and health decisions. He was particularly intent on legalizing marijuana which unlike alcohol and other illicit drugs does not cause death.
This quotation brought him much ridicule. See {585947}. Clinton was of the swing era where there were very negative public views about the morality of using illicit drugs and the character of those who might have used it. So Clinton felt constrained to emphasize that it was only marijuana, the most popular and benign of the illicit drugs, and to emphasize the fact that he did not enjoy it. His successor, however George W. Bush, had been an alcoholic and a heavy cocaine user, but learning from the Clinton error, would never comment about it other than to say that it was wrong and he urged all to avoid drugs.
The prestigious commission had been appointed in 1939 and had studied the problem for 5 years. The findings refuted many of the claims that had been made by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.
Robert L. DuPont is an American psychiatrist, known for his advocacy in the field of substance abuse. He is president of the Institute for Behavior and Health, whose mission is "to reduce the use of illegal drugs". He has written books including Chemical Slavery: Understanding Addiction and Stopping the Drug Epidemic, The Selfish Brain: Learning from Addiction, as well as Drug Testing in Treatment Settings, Drug Testing in Schools, and Drug Testing in Correctional Settings, published by the Hazelden Foundation. DuPont is a fellow of the American Society of Addiction Medicine and a life fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.
