Marijuana quotes from Politicians and others you might know

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"420 day" or the "National Weed Day"

In recognition of "420 day" or the "National Weed Day" for the kids in California that would always meet at 4:20pm to smoke weed...Here are a list of quotes that Presidents or Presidential hopefuls as well as other government entities and celebrities have said about marijuana. These quotes range from the effects of marijuana, legalization of marijuana, and some marijuana facts.

1. "I now have absolute proof that smoking even one marijuana cigarette is equal in brain damage to being on Bikini Island during an H-bomb blast"
   ~Ronald Reagan
   
2. "When I was in England, I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn’t like it, and I didn’t inhale, and I never tried again."
   ~Bill Clinton
   
3. "I smoked pot in college and in the Army..."
   ~Al Gore
   
4. "So what if it's risky? It's the right thing to do. What we're talking about is 160 people in deep pain. It only affects them."{to George Bush about medical marijuana}
   ~Bill Richardson
   
5. "When I was a kid I inhaled frequently. That was the point."
   ~Barack Obama
   
   
6. "I would absolutely never use the federal government to enforce the law of using marijuana"
   ~Ron Paul
   
7. "Pot is not a drug"
   ~Arnold Schwarzenegger - Governor of California
   
8. "You bet I did and I enjoyed it." {on whether he has smoked marijuana}
   ~Michael Bloomberg - New York City Mayor
   
9. "I think that marijuana should not only be legal, I think it should be a cottage industry. It would be wonderful for the state of Maine. There's some pretty good homegrown dope. I'm sure it would be even better if you could grow it with fertilizers and have greenhouses."
   ~Stephen King
   
10. "If we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion by education"
    ~Thomas Jefferson
    
11. "When even one American who has done nothing wrong is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth, then all Americans are in peril."
    ~Harry S. Truman - Former U.S. President
    
12. "I enjoy smoking cannabis and see no harm in it"
    ~Jennifer Aniston
    
13. "And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat."
    ~Biblical - Genesis 1:29
    
14. "Forty million Americans smoked marijuana; the only ones who didn't like it were Judge Ginsberg, Clarence Thomas and Bill Clinton."
    ~Jay Leno
    
15. "Make the most of the Indian Hemp Seed and sow it everywhere."
    ~George Washington
    
16. "The drug is really quite a remarkably safe one for humans, although it is really quite a dangerous one for mice and they should not use it."
    ~J.W.D Henderson Director of the Bureau of Human Drugs, Health and Welfare, Canada
    
17. "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
    
18. "Our youth can not understand why society chooses to criminalize a behavior with so little visible ill effect or adverse social impact... These young people have jumped the fence and found no cliff. And the disrespect for the possession laws fosters a disrespect for laws and the system in general... On top of this is the distinct impression among the youth that some police may use the marihuana laws to arrest people they don't like for other reasons, whether it be their politics, their hair style or their ethnic background." "Federal and state laws (should) be changed to no longer make it a crime to possess marijuana for private use." ; "State laws should make the public use of marijuana a criminal offense punishable by a $100 fine. Under federal law, marijuana smoked in public would merely be subject to seizure."
    ~President Richard M. Nixon's National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse "Marihuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding" March 1972
    
19. "Congress should definitely consider decriminalizing possession of marijuana... We should concentrate on prosecuting the rapists and burglars who are a menace to society."
    ~Dan Quayle U.S. Representative and Vice president under President Bush March 1977
    
20. "Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself; and where they are, they should be changed. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against possession of marihuana in private for personal use... Therefore, I support legislation amending Federal law to eliminate all Federal criminal penalties for the possession of up to one ounce [28g] of marihuana."
    ~Jimmy Carter U.S. President Message to congress 1977
    
21. "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 [1 ounce = 28g] 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 "Legalization of Marijuana Long Overdue" Albuquerque Journal June 8, 1993
    
22. "The greatest service that can be rendered to any country is to add a useful plant to its culture."
    ~Thomas Jefferson
    
23. "In any civilized society, it is every citizen's responsibility to obey just laws. But at the same time, it is every citizen's responsibility to disobey unjust laws."
    ~Martin Luther King Jr.
    
24. "How many murders, suicides, robberies, criminal assaults, holdups, burglaries and deeds of maniacal insanity it causes each year, especially among the young, can only be conjectured...No one knows, when he places a marijuana cigarette to his lips, whether he will become a joyous reveller in a musical heaven, a mad insensate, a calm philosopher, or a murderer..."
    ~HARRY J ANSLINGER Commissioner of the US Bureau of Narcotics 1930-1962
    
25. "...the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races."
    ~Harry J. Anslinger
    
26. "Marijuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death."
    ~Harry J. Anslinger
    
27. "Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men."
    ~Harry J. Anslinger
    
28. "You smoke a joint and you're likely to kill your brother."
    ~Harry J. Anslinger
    
29. "There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others."
    ~Harry Anslinger, 1937 testimony to Congress in support of the Marijuana Tax Act.
    
30. ~If people let government decide which foods they eat and medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny."
    ~Thomas Jefferson
    
31. "I presume, like the rest of us in the country, you are in the habit of household manufacture, and that you will not, like too many, abandon it on the return of peace, to enrich our late enemy, and to nourish foreign agents in our bosom, whose baneful influence & intrigues cost us so much embarrassment & dissension. the shirting for our laborers has been an object of some difficulty. flax is so injurious to our lands, and of so scanty produce, that I have never attempted it. hemp, on the other hand, is abundantly productive and will grow for ever on the same spot, but the breaking and beating of it, which has always been done by hand, is so slow, and so laborious, and so much complained of by our laborers, that I have given it up, and purchased & manufactured cotton for their shirting, the advance price of this however now makes it a serious item of expence; and in the mean time a method of removing the difficulty of preparing hemp occurred to me, so simple & so cheap, that I return to its culture and manufacture.
    
    To a person having a threshing machine, the addition of a hemp break will not cost more than 12. or 15. D. you know that the first mover in that machine is a horizontal horsewheel with cogs on it's upper face. on these is placed a wallower and shaft which give motion to the threshing apparatus. on the opposite side of this same wheel I place another wallower and shaft, thro' which, and near it's outer end, I pass a cross-arm of sufficient strength, projecting on each side 15. I. in this form, nearly under the cross arm is placed a very strong hemp-break, much stronger & heavier than those for the hand, it's head block particularly is massive, and 4. f. high, and near it's upper end, in front, is fixed a strong pin (which we may call it's horn). by this time the cross arm lifts & lets fall the break with hemp stalks, and a little person holds under the head block a large twist of tobacco but larger, where it is more perfectly beaten than I have ever seen done by hand. if the horse wheel has 144. cogs, the wallower 11. rounds, and the horse goes 3 times round in a minute, it will give about 80. strokes in a minute.
    
    I had fixed a break to be moved by the gate of my sawmill, which broke & beat at the rate of 200. lb. a day. but the inconveniences of interrupting that induced me to try the power of a horse, and I have found it answer perfectly, the power being less, so also probably will be the effect, of which I cannot make a fair trial until I commence on the new crop. I expect that a single horse will do the breaking & beating of 10 men. something of this kind has been so long wanted by the cultivators of hemp , that as soon as I can speak of it's effect with certainty, I shall probably describe it anonymously in the public papers, in order to forestall the prevention of it's use by some interloping patentee."
    ~Thomas Jefferson, Letters, December 29, 1815 (To George Fleming)
    
32. "They forbid marriage and inculcate abstinence from certain foods, though God created them to be enjoyed with thanksgiving by believers who have inward knowledge of the truth. For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected when it is taken with thanksgiving."
    ~1 Timothy 4:3-4
    
33. "Be on the watch for the false prophets that come to you in sheep's covering, but inside they are ravenous wolves. By their fruits you will recognize them. Never do people gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles, do they? Likewise every good tree produces fine fruit, but every rotten tree produces worthless fruit; a good tree cannot bear worthless fruit, neither can a rotten tree produce fine fruit. Every tree not producing fine fruit gets cut down and thrown into the fire. Really, then, by their fruits you will recognize those [men]."
    ~Matthew 7:15-20
    
34. ''We did not view marijuana as a significant health problem--as it was not....Nobody dies from marijuana. Marijuana smoking, in fact, if one wants to be honest, is a source of pleasure and amusement to countless millions of people in America, and it continues to be that way.''
    ~Peter Bourne, President Carter's Drug Czar {Source: PBS's Frontline: ''Drug Wars,'' October 2000}
    
35. "The commission has come to the conclusion that the moderate use of hemp drugs is practically attended by no evil results at all. ... ...moderate use of hemp... appears to cause no appreciable physical injury of any kind,... no injurious effects on the mind... [and] no moral injury whatever."
    ~Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1894
    

36. "Having reviewed all the material available to us we find ourselves in agreement with the conclusion reached by the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission appointed by the Government of India (1893-94) and the New York Mayor's Committee (1944 - LaGuardia)that the long-term consumption of cannabis in moderate doses has no harmful effects" "the long-asserted dangers of cannabis are exaggerated and that the related law is socially damaging, if not unworkable"
    ~1968 UK ROYAL COMMISSION, THE WOOTTON REPORT
    
37. "Cannabis is remarkably safe. Although not harmless, it is surely less toxic than most of the conventional medicines it could replace if it were legally available. Despite its use by millions of people over thousands of years, cannabis has never caused an overdose death."
    ~Testimony of Professor Lester Grinspoon, M.D., Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, before the Crime Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., October 1, 1997
    
38. "Marijuana is beneficial to many patients"
    ~Jocelyn Elders, USA Surgeon General
    
39. "The major health and psychological effects of chronic cannabis use, especially daily use over many years, remain uncertain"
    ~The Report of the Australian Government 1996
    
40. "There are no long lasting ill-effects from the acute use of marijuana and no fatalities have ever been recorded ... there seems to be growing agreement within the medical community, at least, that marijuana does not directly cause criminal behaviour, juvenile delinquency, sexual excitement, or addiction."
    ~Dr J. H. Jaffe, The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics. L.Goodman and A Gillman, 3rd edn. 1965
    
41. "... as a multipurpose plant, ganga is used medicinally, even by non-smokers. ....There were no indications of organic brain damage or chromosome damage among smokers and no significant clinical psychiatric, psychological or medical) differences between smokers and controls."
    ~US Jamaican Study 1974
    
42. The U.S. federal government has failed to make public its own 1994 study that undercuts its position that marijuana is carcinogenic - a $2 million study by the National Toxicology Program. The program's deputy director, John Bucher, says the study "found absolutely no evidence of cancer." In fact, animals that received THC had fewer cancers. Bucher denies his agency had been pressured to shelve the report, saying the delay in making it public was due to a personnel shortage.
    
    The Boston Globe reported Thursday (1-30-97) that the study indicates not only that the main ingredient in marijuana, THC, does not cause cancer, but also that it may even protect against malignancies, laboratory tests on animals show.
    
    The report comes on the heels of an editorial in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine that favors the controlled medical use of marijuana, and calls current federal policy "misguided, heavy-handed and inhumane."
    
    The Clinton administration has said that doctors prescribing marijuana could be prosecuted for a federal crime.
    
    Marijuana has been reported to ease the pain, nausea and vomiting in advanced stages of cancer, AIDS and other serious illnesses, but the federal government claims other treatments have been deemed safer than what it calls "a psychoactive, burning carcinogen."
    
    However, The Boston Globe says the government's claim appears to be undercut by its own $2 million study.
    ~BOSTON, Jan. 30, 1997 (UPI)
    
43. "Users in our matched-pair sample smoked marijuana in addition to as many tobacco cigarettes as did their matched non-using pairs. Yet their small airways were, if anything, a bit healthier than their matches. We must tentatively conclude either that marijuana has no harmful effect on such passages or that it actually offers some slight protection against harmful effects of tobacco smoke"
    ~Cannabis in Costa Rica: A Study of Chronic Marijuana Use; Institute of Human Issues
    
44. "The use of marijuana does not lead to morphine or heroin or cocaine addiction and no effort is made to create a market for these narcotics by stimulating the practice of marijuana smoking"
    ~The LaGardia sub-committee of New York 1944
    
45. "Most marijuana users do not go on to use other drugs."
    ~"Marijuana: Facts for Teens." U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Washington, D.C. 1995, p.10.
    
46. "Simulated driving scores for subjects experiencing a normal social "high" and the same subjects under control conditions are not significantly different. However, there are significantly more errors for alcohol intoxicated than for control subjects"
    ~Crancer Study, Washington Department of Motor Vehicles
    
47. "THC's adverse effects on driving performance appear relatively small"
    ~U.S. Department of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (DOT HS 808 078), Final Report, November 1993
    
48. "Compared to alcohol, which makers people take more risks on the road, marijuana made drivers slow down and drive more carefully.... Cannabis is good for driving skills, as people tend to overcompensate for a perceived impairment."
    ~Professor Olaf Drummer, a forensic scientist the Royal College of Surgeons in Melbourne in 1996
    
49. "Medicines often produce side effects. Sometimes they are physically unpleasant. Cannabis too has discomforting side effects, but these are not physical they are political"
    ~The Economist March 28th 1992
    
50. "I'm quite impressed by what's happened to (MS) patients who have used it"
    ~Dr. James Malone-Lee, consultant St. Pancras Hospital, London
    
51. "Measurements and main results. Exposed and nonexposed neonates were compared at 3 days and 1 month old, using the Brazelton Neonatal Assessment Scale, including supplementary items to capture possible subtle effects. There were no significant differences between exposed and nonexposed neonates on day 3. At 1 month, the exposed neonates showed better physiological stability and required less examiner facilitation to reach organized states. The neonates of heavy- marijuana-using mothers had better scores on autonomic stability, quality of alertness, irritability, and self-regulation and were judged to be more rewarding for caregivers."
    ~Prenatal Marijuana Exposure and Neonatal Outcomes in Jamaica: An Ethnographic Study Melanie C. Dreher, PhD; Kevin Nugent, PhD; and Rebekah Hudgins, MA
    
52. "Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself"
    ~President Jimmy Carter
    
53. "Cannabis never killed anybody and it's use is widespread. You can"t stop it. The law defeats itself because all the efforts to stop drugs coming in only drives up the prices and then gangsters move in to push the drugs. If they legalised there wouldn't be gangsters and huge profits...The police are gradually decriminalising the possession of cannabis because they realise there's not much point prosecuting"
    ~Judge James Pickles, UK
    
54. "Prohibition... goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control mans' appetite through legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not even crimes... A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our Government was founded"
    ~President Abraham Lincoln (December 1840)
    
55. ''From the Colombian point of view legalization is the easy solution. I mean, just legalize it and we won't have any more problems. Probably in five years we wouldn't even have guerrillas. No problems. We would have a great country with no problems.''
    ~Jaime Ruiz, Senior Adviser to the Colombian President {Source: Ottawa Citizen, September 6, 2000}
    
56. ''I say legalize drugs because I want to see less drug abuse, not more. And I say legalize drugs because I want to see the criminals put out of business.''
    ~Edward Ellison, former Head of Scotland Yard's Antidrug Squad {Source: London's Daily Mail, March 10, 1998}
    
57. "I am here because I am the first judge in this country to say, in 1990, that the war on drugs was racist. It still is and that hasn't changed"
    ~Judge Pamela Alexander at the DPF Conference, November 1996
    
58. "I, as a responsible adult human being, will never concede the power to anyone to regulate my choice of what I put into my body, or where I go with my mind. From the skin inwards is my jurisdiction, is it not? I choose what may or may not cross that border. Here I am the Customs Agent. I am the Coast guard. I am the sole legal and spiritual government of this territory, and only the laws I choose to enact within myself are applicable"
    ~Alexander Shulgin, PhD, Chemist and author, at the DPF Conference, November 1996
59. "I support decriminalisation. People are smoking pot anyway and to make them into criminals is wrong. It's when you're in jail you really become a criminal."
    ~Sir Paul McCartney, Independent on Sunday, 28th September 1997
    
60. "It is certainly no longer true to say if it ever was, that smoking cannabis is a sign of affiliation to an "alternative" lifestyle. Clearly, in the light of its popularity and to a degree its apparent social acceptability questions are raised about the legalisation of cannabis"
    ~The Misuse of Drugs, Office of Health Economics
    
61. From: Outside View: Let science decide about pot
    By Paul Armentano (NORML)
    
    Currently more than 30 percent of the U.S. population lives in a place where some type of marijuana decriminalization is the law. According to the federal government, this policy "has had virtually no effect on either the marijuana use or on the related attitudes and beliefs about marijuana use among young people."
    
    Since the 1970s, more than a dozen government-appointed committees -- in the United States, Britain, Canada and Australia as well as in other countries -- have issued recommendations regarding marijuana policy. These include the Shafer Commission, appointed by former President Richard Nixon, Canada's Le Dain Commission, and Britain's Wooten Report, all of which concluded that marijuana prohibition causes far more social damage than marijuana use, and the possession of marijuana for personal use should no longer be a criminal offense.
    
    The passage of time has done little to sway the minds of these nonpartisan experts. Consider the conclusions of the Wooten Report, originally issued in 1968: "In considering the scale of penalties, our main aim, having regard to our view of the known effects of cannabis, is to remove for practical purposes, the prospect of imprisonment for possession of a small amount and to demonstrate that taking the drug in moderation is a relatively minor offense."
    
    Parallel those findings with the recent recommendations of the conservative British Police Foundation, which in a 2001 report concluded: "The law's implementation damages individuals in terms of criminal records and risks to jobs and relationships to a degree that far outweighs any harm that cannabis may be doing to a society. Prison should no longer be a penalty for possession." The millennium may be different, but their analysis remains the same.
    
    Scientific inquiries on this side of the Atlantic have yielded equally consistent results. In 1972, Nixon's handpicked Shafer Commission recommended Congress remove criminal penalties for the possession of marijuana for personal use as well as on the "casual distribution of small amounts of marijuana."
    
    Ten years later, researchers at the U.S. National Research Council, a division of the National Academy of Sciences, reaffirmed that prohibition was ineffective and should be "seriously reconsidered." Most recently, a special Canadian House of Lords committee concluded, "The consequences of conviction for possession of a small amount of cannabis for personal use are disproportionate to the potential harm associated with that behavior."
    ~Source THC
    
62. "It really puzzles me to see Marijuana connected with Narcotics - Dope and all that crap…it's a thousand times better than whiskey - it's an Assistant - a friend."
    ~Louis Armstrong
    
63. "Make the most of the help India hemp seed, sow it everywhere!"
    ~George Washington
    
64. "We shall, by and by, want a world of hemp more for our own consumption."
    ~John Adams
    
65. "The greatest service which can be rendered any country is the add a useful plant to its culture!"
    ~Thomas Jefferson
    
66. One of the problems that the marijuana reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does.
    
    Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night.
    Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people.
    Marijuana does not suppress medical research.
    Marijuana does not peek in bedroom windows.
    
    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.
    ~Richard Cowan, Former head of NORML, Now editor of http://www.marijuananews.com/
    
67. "Marijuana in its natural form is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man."
    ~DEA's Administrative Law Judge, Francis Young. Source: US Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Agency, "In the Matter of Marijuana Rescheduling Petition," [Docket #86-22], (September 6, 1988), p. 57.
    
68. "I do not believe that the federal government should treat adults who choose to smoke marijuana as criminals," Frank said in a statement, adding that it's "not appropriate in a free society."
    ~Rep. Barney Frank

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