Quotes About Policy

This book argues that the history of federal student loan policies is best understood as a series of messes in which attention became focused on some particular aspect of a larger problem and well-intentioned policies were devised to address each narrowly defined concern.

I'm suggesting that criminalizing chemically fertilized grass in favor of unnaturally-fed corn is not a rational trade off.

For anybody who suspects that we need to reform the drug laws, there is an easier argument to make, and a harder argument to make. The easier argument is to say that we all agree drugs are bad—it's just that drug prohibition is even worse.

Harry Anslinger is our own darkest impulses, given a government department and a license to kill.

It occurred to me as I walked up and down those Lisbon streets that we all—the vast majority of drug warriors, and the vast majority of legalizers—have a set of shared values. We all want to protect children from drugs. We all want to keep people from dying as a result of drug use. We all want to reduce addiction. And now the evidence strongly suggests that when we move beyond the drug war, we will be able to achieve those shared goals with much greater success.

In the years since heroin was decriminalized in Portugal, its use has been halved there—while in the United States, where the drug war continues, it has doubled.28

Choosing to put a chemical into your body should not be a crime, and being addicted should not be a crime. Instead, all the money spent on arresting, trying, and punishing addicts should be transferred to educating kids and helping addicts to recover.

When the government war on alcohol stopped, the gangster war for alcohol stopped.

This was the bullet at the birth of drug prohibition, and nobody knows where it came from, even now.

The war on drugs makes it almost impossible for drug users to get milder forms of their drug—and it pushes them inexorably toward harder drugs.

Professor Jeffrey Miron of Harvard University has shown that the murder rate has dramatically increased twice in U.S. history—and both times were during periods when prohibition was dramatically stepped up. The first is from 1920 to 1933, when alcohol was criminalized. The second is from 1970 to 1990, when the prohibition of drugs was dramatically escalated.

His goal as a doctor was always "trying to identify what happened in the past" of an addict that made them find everyday life unbearable, and to help them overcome it by offering compassion and helping them to build a good life as an alternative. Now they were asking: If this is the goal of all good doctors, why can't it be the goal of government policy?

The harder you crack down, the stronger the drugs become. The crackdown on cannabis in the 1970s triggered the rise of skunk and superskunk. The crackdown on powder cocaine in the early 1980s led to the creation of crack, a more compact form of the drug. Many drug users want and prefer the milder forms of their drug—but they can't get them under prohibition, so they are pressed onto harder drugs.

we need to approach drug addiction not as a criminal justice situation but more as a public health situation.

In 1975 the average American had a blood lead level of 15 micrograms per deciliter. Today it's 0.85 micrograms per deciliter.

Mexico is not deciding this policy . . . This war, this criminalization strategy, is imposed by the U.S. government.

The policy of prohibition summoned these characters into existence, because it needs them. So long as it lives, they live.

To rule is easy, to govern difficult.

I will always support legislation which respects and values life.

If gun free zones save lives, why doesn't Obama just declare Iraq, Syria & Afghanistan one big gun free zone?

The only realistic view is that a human life arises gradually, which is not much help in making personal decisions or devising public policy.

It is time to recognize a simple fact of life. Contrary to what some of my colleagues seem to believe, tax cuts do not pay for themselves.

I just did not discuss my personal life, my sexuality with the media. That was my policy.

As a matter of fact, one of the things in Obamacare is that for the elderly, every five years you must have end-of-life counseling. Translation: suicide counseling.