James P. Gray: Quotes about people

“The effect of our drug policy on the health of people who use illicit drugs stem from four basic problems: (1) a lack of information about medial hygiene, because our laws push drug users away from the medical professionals who can help them; (2) no quality control regarding either the strength or purity of illicit drugs; (3) the inability of many drug users to prepare and use injectable drugs under more medically hygienic conditions;… and (4) the enormous pressure on drug addicts to engage in dangerous criminal activity, such as prostitution, burglary and drug dealing, in order to get the money to purchase these artificially expensive drugs.”

James P. Gray

Source: Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It: A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs, 2011, pp. 126-127

Money , Law , People , Health

“Nothing in the history of the United State of America has eroded the protection of our Bill of Rights nearly as much as our government’s War on Drugs… Conventional wisdom says that the only way to stem the tide is to grant law enforcement agencies greater and greater powers and to let them intrude more and more completely into the private lives of our people.”

James P. Gray

Source: Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It: A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs, 2011, p. 95

History , Law , War , People

“Even high security prisoners like Charles Manson are testing positive in prison for illicit drugs… Our laws are not deterring many people from a life of drug abuse and drug trafficking, and if we cannot even keep these drug out of our prisons, how can we expect to keep them out of our communities?”

James P. Gray

Source: Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It: A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs, 2011, p. 49

Life , People , Law , Communication

“Not only have more and more people realized that alcoholism really is a disease, but the legal system has also stated clearly in the California Supreme Court case of Sundance v. Municipal Court that people who are addicted to alcohol cannot be punished merely for their addition… It remains a critical part of our zero-tolerance policy that people who use illegal drugs cannot be considered in human terms. They must be treated as demons and we must contrast ‘drug cultures,’ on the one hand, with ‘decent’ people, on the other.”

James P. Gray

Source: Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It: A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs, 2011, pp. 124-125

Parting , People , Alcohol , Disease

“I had seen firsthand that we were wasting unimaginable amounts of our tax dollars, increasing crime and despair, and severely and unnecessarily harming people’s lives, particularly our children’s, by our failed drug policy. In short, I had seen that our drug laws were a failure, and I simply could not keep quiet about it any longer.”

James P. Gray

Source: Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It: A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs, 2011, p. 1

Despair , Law , Children , People

“So much money is wasted in the drug war. I've had two congressman, Orange County congressman, tell me that there are lots of people in Washington who now believe that the drug war is not winnable but that it is imminently fundable… Where President Eisenhower once talked about the Military-Industrial Complex, we now have the Prison-Industrial Complex. It's the same thing, the same disease.”

James P. Gray

“Hey, Wheres the Stoners, Druids and Ferret-Lovers?” O.C. Weekly (Feb. 24, 2004) https://ocweekly.com/hey-wheres-the-stoners-druids-and-ferret-lovers-6381081/

Money , War , People , Disease