#prohibition

Prohibitionism is based on the premise that citizens will refrain from behaviors that are deemed immoral or harmful if such behaviors are decreed unlawful and criminal, even though such behaviors do not harm or unreasonably endanger others without their informed consent. Prohibitionism stems from totalitarian paternalism, an ideology rather prevalent among governing elites around the world, based on the presumption that people are feeble, foolish and irresponsible, needing constant protection from themselves. ↗

— Jeffrey Dhywood

#totalitarianism

There are criminals who are drug users, but most addicts are criminals only by virtue of prohibition or from resorting to crime to pay inflated black market prices. ↗

— Danny Sugerman

#crime #criminals #inflated #market #most

Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could. ↗

— William F. Buckley, Jr.

#could #done #even #ever #every

I knew that the Hague Convention prohibited the use of poison in war. I didn't know the details of the terms of the Convention, but I did know of that prohibition. ↗

— Otto Hahn

#details #did #hague #i #knew

There has never been a 'war on drugs'! In our history we can only see an ongoing conflict amongst various drug users – and producers. In ancient Mexico the use of alcohol was punishable by death, while the ritualistic use of mescaline was highly worshipped. In 17th century Russia, tobacco smokers were threatened with mutilation or decapitation, alcohol was legal. In Prussia, coffee drinking was prohibited to the lower classes, the use of tobacco and alcohol was legal. ↗

— Sebastian Marincolo

#caffeine #coffee #drug-user #drugs #legalization

The amount of money and of legal energy being given to prosecute hundreds of thousands of Americans who are caught with a few ounces of marijuana in their jeans simply makes no sense - the kindest way to put it. A sterner way to put it is that it is an outrage, an imposition on basic civil liberties and on the reasonable expenditure of social energy. ↗

— William F. Buckley

#civil-rights #drug-laws #drugs #marijuana #prohibition

Nothing optional—from homosexuality to adultery—is ever made punishable unless those who do the prohibiting (and exact the fierce punishments) have a repressed desire to participate. As Shakespeare put it in King Lear, the policeman who lashes the whore has a hot need to use her for the very offense for which he plies the lash. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#closeted #homosexuality #hypocrisy #prohibition #religion

Drug prohibition has caused gang warfare and other violent crimes by raising the prices of drugs so much that vicious criminals enter the market to make astronomical profits, and addicts rob and steal to get money to pay the inflated prices for their drugs. ↗

— Michael Badnarik

#caused #crimes #criminals #enter #gang

We find many things to which the prohibition of them constitutes the only temptation. ↗

— William Hazlitt

#find #many #only #prohibition #temptation

Prohibition has made nothing but trouble. ↗

— Al Capone

#nothing #prohibition #trouble