Untitled Document
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The War on Drugs at a Glance
These graphs and more are available
for free download at www.november.org/graphs
| "Prohibition
... attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and
makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition
law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government
was founded." - Abraham Lincoln:
Speech in the Illinois House of Representatives, Dec 18, 1840. |
| "In
sum, truth takes a holiday, and special interests burrow into
the sources of wealth and influence. The result is waste and
nonsense that in any other human endeavor would be intolerable.
If there is a key to understanding America's-criminal justice
problem, it lies in recognizing that the war on drugs has been
lost and never was winable. In order to feed the war machine,
we have sacrificed our courts, prisons and law enforcement. More
importantly, we have surrendered many of the freedoms that made
us the freest society in history." -
John L. Kane, Jr., Senior Judge, U.S. District Court, Denver |
| "Mistrust
those in whom the impulse to punish is strong." - Friedrich Nietzsche |
"Injustice
anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
| "Those
who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary
safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin |
"Over
the course of the period from the mid-1970's until today, the
United States has embarked on one of the largest public policy
experiments in our history. Yet this experiment remains shockingly
absent from public debate: the United States now imprisons a
higher percentage of its citizens than any other country in the
world.
"With the world's largest prison population, our prisons
test the limits of our democracy and push the boundaries of our
moral identity". - Virginia
Democratic Senator Jim Webb, speaking at the Senate Joint Economic
Committee hearing on mass incarceration, fall 2007 |
| "We
never knew that [prosecutors] would take the generosity of good
public policy makers and turn it on its head. We never knew that
they would take out after innocent people in so many different
ways. I cannot even get into telling my colleagues how they use
conspiracy laws. No evidence, no documentation. These conspiracy
laws are filling up the prisons." -
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) |
| "We've
just about lost a generation of young people. We're building
new prison beds at the rate of about 1000 a week and we're still
overcrowded... We've spent $100 billion on the war on drugs and
we're losing it." - US District
Judge Thomas Wiseman |
"Never doubt
that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change
the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
- Margaret Mead
These graphs and more are available
for free download at www.november.org/graphs
|
