Gary Johnson Quotes

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

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

The consumption of drugs could be legalized, not penalized.

There's a school of thought that says if you legalize drugs it will solve the problem. We're all good liberals, we said let's do it and see what happens. We wanted to be honest about it. So in our brainstorming sessions we'd say, what if? The finding was that all the negative things came out also. The answer is that we didn't believe in the full legalization of drugs. But we don't believe in the criminalization of drugs, either.

I am glad that people are trying to have a rational conversation about drugs.

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 wrong, both tactically and morally. It assumes that people are too stupid, too reckless, and too irresponsible to decide whether and under what conditions to consume drugs. The war on drugs is morally bankrupt.

By bringing about a rational drug policy, we'd be freeing up a lot of resources for real crime. Drug disputes would get played out with courts rather than with guns. So it would make this country a much better place overnight.

You look at any culture, and prohibition has invariably been an unmitigated failure. It is just idiotic to criminalise any substance, I think.

The current dominant opinion supporting the war on drugs in general, and our anti-marijuana laws in particular, is reminiscent of the opinion that supported the nationwide ban on alcohol consumption when I was a student. While alcoholic beverages are now regarded as ordinary articles of commerce, their use was then condemned with the same moral fervor that now supports the war on drugs.

Public opinion in the United States is in favor of legalizing drugs. The one who is blind is the government.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

You have to understand that we've had more than 40 years now of massively financed propaganda called the 'War on Drugs'.

Drugs are a tragedy for addicts. But criminalizing their use converts that tragedy into a disaster for society, for users and non-users alike. Our experience with the prohibition of drugs is a replay of our experience with the prohibition of alcoholic beverages.

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

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?

We are talking about creating a legal framework to regulate the production, transit and consumption of drugs.

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.

But my humble opinion is, I'm not quite sure where I stand on the legalization of drugs - though, if tequila is legal, pot should probably be legal.

I'm in favor of legalizing drugs. According to my value system, if people want to kill themselves, they have every right to do so. Most of the harm that comes from drugs is because they are illegal

This has been a clear mandate to Congress to end, as soon as possible, the tragic folly of federal prohibition.