Quotes on Drugs and Drug Policy

Real coffee

A cup of coffee -- real coffee -- home-browned, home-ground, home-made, that comes to you dark as a hazel-eye, but changes to a golden bronze as you temper it with cream that never cheated, but was real cream from its birth, thick, tenderly yellow, perfectly sweet, neither lumpy nor frothing on the Java: such a coffee is a match for twenty blue devils, and will exorcise them all.

-- Henry Ward Beecher, Eyes and Ears

Twain on Cigars

If I cannot smoke cigars in Heaven, I shall not go.

-- Mark Twain

Einstein on Prohibition

The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the Prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this.

-- Albert Einstein, "My First Impression of the U.S.A.", 1921

Einstein on Pipes

I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs.

-- Albert Einstein, quoted in "Put That in Your Pipe" by Rick Newcombe in Reason magazine, Vol.26 No.3 (July 1994)

Szasz on drug prohibition

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

-- Thomas Szasz, in Reason magazine.

Gonzo

I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me.

-- Hunter S. Thompson

Quayle on pot

Congress should definitely consider decriminalizing possession of marijuana.

-- then-Congressman Dan Quayle, March 1977