I loved when Bush came out and said, 'We are losing the war against drugs.' You know what that implies? There's a war being fought, and the people on drugs are winning it.
My 26 years experience as a police officer and official, including command of two police districts, tells me that unfortunately the only short-term response that can counter the on-street violence and offer neighborhoods relief from crime and drugs is aggressive law enforcement.... Cities and states have made police the institution of first response rather than of last resort in addressing this crisis.
But I will say that the drugs are much more ferocious then they used to be. There are people wrecking their lives with addiction, which seems much more severe.
There was a time when I used to live in Spain that it went really crazy with drugs and stuff like that.
After spending three years of my life looking into this, I am more convinced than ever that the U.S. government's responsibility for the drug problems in South Central Los Angeles and other inner cities is greater than I ever wrote in the newspaper.
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.
Everybody across this country knows that the tsunami of drugs is threatening their very families.
[Crack epidemic] definitely has impacted folks in my family, most definitely. I think that's true for most, if not all people, regardless of color, that grew up in and around areas that were closer to the nucleus of the crack epidemic.If you look at Baltimore or D.C., Detroit, Chicago, Oakland, like, Los Angeles.
America is becoming a drug infested nation. Drugs are becoming cheaper than candy bars. We are not going to let it happen any longer.
Our current drug crisis is a tragedy born of a phony system of classification. For reasons that are little more than accidents of history, we have divided a group of nonfood substances into two categories: items purchasable for supposed pleasure (such as alcohol), and illicit drugs.
Meth production and use is a serious problem in Kentucky and across the country. Clearly, there is a growing need for a national strategy to combat this crisis. Increasing public awareness is a significant means for prevention.
Let me tell you what would be a really, really great project for all of us. Why don't we start mentoring kids? Whether we're liberal or conservative, why don't we start going into the schools and giving the kids a sense of their own purpose, their own self-worth, their future, and what they can learn from us? You know, if we're mentoring kids together, we might actually begin to talk to one another again and listen to one another. We have a big crisis all over the country and in our state on drugs.
I am at the same time thoroughly convinced that there is no great increase in the use of narcotics in America. Nothing can be gained by magnifying real conditions (neither would it be right to do so), nor by hiding real conditions. Conditions are bad enough as they are, but not as bad as some try to depict.
Essentially he was observing the same phenomenon as Governor Smith in {617998}.
Meth is a major problem not only in our urban areas, but in most of the rural areas of Colorado. No region has been immune from this scourge and it is getting larger.
The single biggest way to stop the drug crisis is to educate people on the fact that if you do it, it's probably going to kill you or it's going to ruin your life. So why don't we all work together to stop that?
The drug problem in this country is a consumption issue.
I've lost over 800 West Virginians the last year. Lost their lives to opiate and drug addiction. This is something that we've got to fight. We need to have treatment centers that take care of people. We need to start basically education from kindergarten all the way through adulthood. We need to get involved and stop this epidemic that's going on that's just ravaging.
Our communities face many challenges, from keeping our kids safe in public, to the war on terrorism. But few have such immediate consequences as we face from methamphetamine.
I think that it has to be a very humane approach to this issue, and we have to come up with solutions to it. But we also have to do something about the drugs that are coming across our southern border that are killing our kids... I think there are some people who want to leave this country and return to the country they came from, but obviously it requires a broader solution that that, and we all know that.
It's in every single county. It's in our cities but it's also in our wealthier suburbs. It's in our small towns. There is no place in Ohio where you can hide from drug epidemic .
There are 8,000 addicts in New York City. With legitimate supplies of drugs cut off, this small army would be likely to break out violently when the narcotic hunger becomes stronger. If the victims are permitted to roam about without the drugs they become dangerous.
Meth is a national problem to the extent that it's not limited to one state; it's not limited to one region of the country. As to whether or not it requires a national solution, I'm not sure we're there yet, but that's something that's certainly being debated on the Hill; it's certainly something that we're discussing within the administration and that will continue.
The Philippines is very important to me strategically and militarily. And I've had numerous conversations with the leader of the Philippines and - and he's got a big problem. He's got a massive drug problem. He's been very, very tough on that drug problem, but he has a massive drug problem.