Bruce Sterling Quotes

You have these crops of poppies that supply something like 90% of the heroin sold in Europe and actually represents more than half of the Afghanistan's GDP.

The war on drugs is really no war at all - it's a business!

The fight against the drug smuggling is lost worldwide.

In fact, street gangs are the primary distributor of illegal drugs in the United States.

The war on drugs is not being won, and it continues to threaten stability and democracy not only in the Andes but throughout the Caribbean as well, where tiny police and military forces are outclassed by the sophisticated equipment in the hands of traffickers passing through the region on the way to their market in this country.

Who most benefits from keeping marijuana illegal? The greatest beneficiaries are the major criminal organizations in Mexico and elsewhere that earn billions of dollars annually from this illicit trade - and who would rapidly lose their competitive advantage if marijuana were a legal commodity.

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

Show me one American drug kingpin who has been put in jail in America. There are a number of Hispanic kingpins from South and Central America but I don’t see any Mr. Smith’s.

… a succession of generals who held the chief antidrug post in Mexico are now in prison for taking part in the very kind of crime they were supposed to prevent.

By any objective standard, Joaquin Guzman Loera is an evil man who has caused untold suffering for others.

Drug trafficking is an inherently dangerous and violent business.

So much for the crusade against drugs . . . all America is actually doing is consolidating its position as the biggest dealer in addictive and lethal substances on the planet, waging war on all rivals, whether they take the form of the Thai domestic tobacco industry or the Colombian cocaine cartels.

We're both Welshmen and growing up, when Howard Marks was finally caught, it was all over the news. He did an interview in the Welsh language, which I also speak, and I was sort of just amazed that this man from a small country was for many years supplying much of the world with most of the marijuana it was smoking. It was incredible.

We are kidding ourselves if we don't think of the drug business as a legitimate business. It's what funds governments. It's too much money to ignore.

The illegal drug trade is the financial engine that fuels many terrorist organizations around the world, including Osama bin Laden.

Worse that drugs is drug trafficking. Much worse. Drugs are a disease, and I don't think that there are good drugs or that marijuana is good. Nor cigarettes. No addiction is good. I include alcohol. The only good addiction is love. Forget everything else.

The scourge of drug trafficking, that favors violence and sows the seeds of suffering and death, requires of society as a whole an act of courage.

So long as large sums of money are involved - and they are bound to be if drugs are illegal - it is literally impossible to stop the traffic, or even to make a serious reduction in its scope.

If you import a commercial quantity of illegal drugs. It is because you have made the personal decision that you are prepared to get rich by destroying our children. I have made the decision that I love our children enough that we will kill you if you do this.

Economics taught in most of the elite universities are practically useless in my context. My country [Afghanistan] is dominated by drug economy and a mafia; textbook economics does not work in my context.

What I like about Layer Cake is its intelligent through-line. First of all, I think it's very close to the truth; I think this is what successful drug dealers are like. They don't drive around in flashy cars, they don't show off, they behave very quietly, they get on with their job and they earn lots of money. And it goes up and up and up and up the scale. Secondly - and selfishly - I like the moral aspect of the movie, which is that violence has consequences, and you feel emotionally involved with the violence.

It's the flip side of illegal success. This man [Pablo Escobar ] turned a small-time drug thing into a large industry. An international, successful industry. And he almost took a country, Columbia, he took it almost hostage, took over it. It was incredible.

Some call it bootlegging. Some call it racketeering. I call it a business.

In Russia, there are those who make their money in criminal ways, but I earn everything myself.

Just see how it glints and sparkles. Of course it is a nucleus and focus of crime. Every good stone is. They are the devil