Hamid Karzai Quotes

The problem, therefore, reduced itself to [opium] production in Persia, Turkey, and Jugoslavia. The first of these countries declared that it could not restrict production without a loan of ten million tomans, customs autonomy, and a financial moratorium. The other two said that until other means of livelihood had been found for their peasant populations, production could not be limited.

The effect of the [opium prohibition] edict was electrical. Farmers stopped cultivation with little resistance. Smokers abandoned the habit by millions; it became unfashionable to smoke in public; and the young were constrained not to acquire the habit…

No nation alone, however great its vigilance, can erect a barrier high enough to keep out narcotics when opium is grown or drugs are manufactured without limitation or restriction. The nations of the world must be aroused to cooperate.

As long as there is a demand [for drugs], there will be a supply.

What farmers require is, that the prices should be moderate, and the markets steady; and for this reason I did, in 1826, 1827, and 1828, take the course which I would now recommend to the House.

Prohibition begets proliferation

We don't pay truckers not to truck, we don't pay miners not to mine and we shouldn't pay farmers not to farm.

Until we do something about demand, Latin America will never be able to solve the drug problem on its own.

We know the war on drugs will not be won in Washington DC When the United States of America decides it wants to do something and the people pull together, amazing things can be done.

In fighting the drug war, we are repeating all the mistakes of Vietnam, but on U.S. soil this time, with all U.S. casualties. The costs of winning far outweigh any possible benefits.

We cannot arrest our way out of the drug problem.

For all our policing, we understand that law enforcement is not the solution to the problem of drugs in our society.

In the United States, at least one druggist out of every ten exists by means of profits from the sale of habit-forming drugs, of which, of course, opium and its derivatives are most important.

We found that we had captured, with the Philippines, an opium problem

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.

I know of nothing you can sell where you can make a greater profit than drugs—if you survive.

Are we going to take the hands of the federal government completely off any effort to adjust the growing of national crops, and go right straight back to the old principle that every farmer is a lord of his own farm and can do anything he wants, raise anything, any old time, in any quantity, and sell any time he wants?

Drug consumption, production and trafficking should be subject to global regulations, which means that consumption and production should be legalized but within certain limits and conditions.

Drug money, such as booze money during Prohibition, has corrupted countless police, Drug Enforcement Administration agents, border patrol agents, prosecutors and judges... Because illegal drugs are unregulated, their purity is unknowable -- accounting for thousands of overdose deaths and injuries... Let's stipulate that some unknown number of Americans will become addicts after legalization, who otherwise would not have. We must ask whether the terrible price we are now paying -- in police costs, international drug control efforts, border security, foregone tax revenue, overdose deaths, corruption and violence -- is worth it.

While the American proposals for the limitation of [opium] production may have been theoretically sound, the United States ignored the practical obstacles in the way of their achievement. In one sense these proposals were unfair, since they transferred the responsibility for suppressing the international drug traffic from the strong countries to lamentably weak governments such as those of China, Persia and Turkey. Financially, the United States stood to lose nothing and to gain everything by the acceptance of its proposals. The producing countries, as well as the governments of territories where smoking prevails, would on the other hand be obliged to give up revenues amounting to millions of dollars a year. In other words, the United States asked from the remainder of the world sacrifices which entailed no hardships for herself.

In a given year, the government may decide that farmers are growing more raisins than Americans will want to eat. That would cause supply to outstrip demand. Raisin prices would drop. And raisin farmers might go out of business.

The war on drugs is a war on our own families …. We have to move from a system that punishes to a system that treats.

One of the many economic differences between developed and developing countries is that developed countries subsidize farmers while developing countries tax farmers.

We have lost the War on Drugs. We cannot arrest our way out of it….It’s a public health problem, not a crime problem.

There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.