Larry Elder Quotes

The War on Drugs employs millions - politicians, bureaucrats, policemen, and now the military - that probably couldn't find a place for their dubious talents in a free market, unless they were to sell pencils from a tin cup on street corners.

I believe that the war on drugs is a tragically misplaced use of resources - an immoral venture that produces far more suffering than it alleviates.

If you want to fight a war on drugs, sit down at your own kitchen table and talk to your own children.

Once brave politicians and others explain the war on drugs' true cost, the American people will scream for a cease-fire. Bring the troops home, people will urge. Treat drugs as a health problem, not as a matter for the criminal justice system.

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.”

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

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.

Anyone who advocates pill testing is giving the green light to drugs. That is absolutely unacceptable.

The war on drugs has made government more powerful, citizens less free, and hasn't helped users or addicts.

Acid wasn't getting a whole lot of bad press at the time, and as I saw the whole bad-press thing happen, I became aware that the government had done a whole lie on all the other benign drugs as well. It became clear to me that the government wanted no real drug education.

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

You wanna get rid of drug crime in this country? Fine, let's just get rid of all the drug laws.

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

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

The consumption of drugs could be legalized, not penalized.

I hear that opium smoking is strictly banned in England, and so England knows the harm that the drug does. If it does not allow it to poison its own people, it should not allow it to poison the people of other countries.

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.

The old system, the War on Drugs, was a train wreck.

So many people view the war on drugs as a failure, as something that was perhaps intended and carried out with good intentions but very badly executed.

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.

The way this country deals with drugs is just not funny. What a waste of everyone's time and effort. What a waste of a lot of people's lives.

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

I know why we can't have a frank discussion with our policymakers - if you're in the government or in law enforcement you cannot acknowledge that drugs are anything but inherently evil and morally wrong.

I sit on the Drug Policy Subcommittee of the United States Congress. I'm on the speaker's task force. This is something people would rather turn away from and not face, but in fact it is possibly the greatest threat we face.