Barney Frank Quotes

I don't think marijuana should be illegal.

The importation and sale of marijuana is condemned and punished as a serious crime, but we accept as legitimate the manufacture and sale of an infinitely more addictive and deadly drug: the nicotine in cigarettes that cost the lives of 390,000 American citizens last year.

Yes, cannabis is dangerous, but no more than other perfectly legal drugs. It's time for a rethink

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.

I really believe that we should treat marijuana like we treat beverage alcohol…. The War on Drugs is not working.

I really believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage alcohol. I've never used marijuana and I don't intend to, but it's just one of those things that I think: this war on drugs just hasn't succeeded.

I can tell you that the formula works, and works pretty well. You avoid criminals and violence, you refuse their mode of money that nourishes the cartels, and that is a great solution to the violence problem. In relation to the health problem, I have not ever heard of anybody dying from an overdose of marijuana.

If someone wants to do drugs ... as long as he or she isn't corrupting minors or driving under the influence or endangering others, shouldn't a person have that right?

I'm a recreational pot-smoker. There has never been enough of a distinction between marijuana and other drugs. It's a human rights issue, a censorship issue, and a choice issue.

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

The major basis for my opposition to marijuana prohibition has not been how badly it's worked, the fact that it's produced much more harm than good - it has been primarily a moral reason: I don't think the state has any more right to tell me what to put into my mouth than it has to tell me what can come out of my mouth.

I don't think [pot] is more dangerous than alcohol.

Pot enables you to think clearly without any fear or any limits. It's a mind-expander, which is part of why it's illegal and why drugs like Vicodin are legal.

I don't think that there would be more users if drugs were legalized.

Now here's somebody who wants to smoke a marijuana cigarette. If he's caught, he goes to jail. Now is that moral? Is that proper? I think it's absolutely disgraceful that our government, supposed to be our government, should be in the position of converting people who are not harming others into criminals, of destroying their lives, putting them in jail. That's the issue to me. The economic issue comes in only for explaining why it has those effects. But the economic reasons are not the reasons.

Now it is one thing to say I say it that people shouldn't consume psychoactive drugs. It is entirely something else to condone marijuana laws, the application of which resulted, in 1995, in the arrest of 588,963 Americans. Why are we so afraid to inform ourselves on the question?

There is no logical basis for the prohibition of marijuana. $7.7 billion is a lot of money, but that is one of the lesser evils. Our failure to successfully enforce these laws is responsible for the deaths of thousands of people in Colombia. I haven't even included the harm to young people. It's absolutely disgraceful to think of picking up a 22-year-old for smoking pot. More disgraceful is the denial of marijuana for medical purposes.

I'm for legalizing marijuana. Why pick on those drugs? Valium is legal. You just go to a doctor and get it and overdose on it - what's the difference? Prozac, all that stuff, so why not marijuana? Who cares? It's something that grows out of the ground - why not? Go smoke a head of cabbage. I don't care what you smoke.

I'm opposed to legalizing marijuana because it acts as a gateway drug.

I like marijuana because it keeps me from killing people. And I think there are a lot of people out there who are just like me. The reason it's not legal is because most people get up in the morning and get high, then forget to go out and vote for it.

There is no reason to think today's levels of [drug] addiction are anywhere near the levels that would be reached under legalization.

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.

I think pot should be legal. I don’t smoke it, but I like the smell of it.

That's what I hate about the war on drugs. All day long we see those commercials: "Here's your brain, here's your brain on drugs", "Just Say No", "Why do you think they call it dope?" … And then the next commercial is [singing] "This Bud's for yooouuuu." C'mon, everybody, let's be hypocritical bastards. It's okay to drink your drug. We meant those other drugs. Those untaxed drugs. Those are the ones that are bad for you.

I think it's about time we legalize marijuana... We either put people who are smoking marijuana behind bars or we legalize it, but this little game we are playing in the middle is not helping us, it is not helping Mexico and it is causing massive violence on our southern border... Fifty percent of the money going to these cartels is coming just from marijuana coming across our border.