Peter McWilliams Quotes

If alcohol is legal, I don't see why people still have a ban on marijuana.

There is absolutely no difference between alcohol prohibition and drug prohibition except the drug being prohibited.

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.

Penalties against drug use should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against the possession of marijuana in private for personal use.

Letting states legalize marijuana would free federal law enforcement resources for the more urgent tasks of thwarting, apprehending, and prosecuting international terrorists or murderers... As a matter of States' rights, regulating marijuana and alcohol seem indistinguishable; and, alcohol policy has been entrusted to the States since the repeal of Prohibition in 1933

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.

The FDA calls certain substances "controlled." But there are no "controlled substances," there are only controlled citizens.

Theres a constant struggle going on about how much will be illegal and how much you will be free to take. Can we open the pharmacies? Can we put Valium and Percodan and those sorts of things out on the shelves? I wouldn't take it. I don't know.

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

The choice is not between drugs and no drugs, but between illegal drugs and legal drugs. Until the 1920s drugs were legal, why not now? Lots of people are on drugs anyway - it is called medication.

It's a joke. Greed and the desire to take drugs are two separate things. If you want to separate the two, the thing you do is make drugs legal. Accept the reality that people do want to change their consciousness, and make an effort to make safer, healthier drugs.

We are imprisoning or giving jail sentences to young people who are smoking marijuana.

No one ever died from smoking marijuana, but millions of people have died by believing politicians.

Addiction should never be treated as a crime. It has to be treated as a health problem. We do not send alcoholics to jail in this country. Over 500,000 people are in our jails who are nonviolent drug users.

There are a lot of people for whom psychedelics have been really beneficial. But I wouldn't recommend it to everyone. Some are just not ready but society would benefit from letting people who are ready for psychedelics have legal acces to them.

One might ask why tobacco is legal and marijuana not. A possible answer is suggested by the nature of the crop.

You got a million drug laws now because the bosses figured there was more money in putting people in jail than taxing something anyone can grow on a window sill.

If the principle is, "Let's not get lethal substances out to the public", the first one you'd go after is tobacco. The next one you'd go after is alcohol. Way down the list you'd get to cocaine, and sort of invisibly low you'd get to marijuana.

Why do we put people who are on drugs in jail? They're sick, they're not criminals. Sick people don't get healed in prison. You see? It makes no sense.

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

I'm for legalizing marijuana. Why pick on those drugs? Valium is legal. You just go to a doctor and get it and overdose on it - what's the difference? Prozac, all that stuff, so why not marijuana? Who cares? It's something that grows out of the ground - why not? Go smoke a head of cabbage. I don't care what you smoke.

While alcohol ... continues to wreak havoc in America, supported by a $6 billion-a-year alcohol industry advertising campaign extolling the joy of inebriation, the far less harmful drug of marijuana remains illegal and continues to ruin people's lives - only if they are caught possessing and convicted of that crime.

Complete prohibition of all chemical mind changers can be decreed, but cannot be enforced, and tends to create more evils than it cures.

LSD is no longer playing a bad role in the drug scene and psychiatrists are again trying to submit their proposals for research with this substance to the health authorities. I hope that LSD will again become available in the normal way, for the medical profession. Then it could play the role it really should, a beneficial role.

All drugs of any interest to any moderately intelligent person in America are now illegal.