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Celebrities and Public Figures Stephen Fry Actor, Journalist, Writer, Comedian, Television Presenter and Film Director Writers Iain Banks Writer and novelist, Transform patron Actors Woody Harrelson Actor TV Jonathan Dimbleby TV presenter, writer, political commentator Other Public Figures The Dowager Duchess of Bedford
Stephen Fry Actor, Journalist, Writer, Comedian, Television Presenter and Film Director
Iain Banks Writer and novelist, Transform patron “I think Transform is a necessary voice of sanity in the debate about drugs. The choice we have is not between a drug free society and a society with drugs; it is between a society with drugs and a sensible attitude to them and a society with drugs tearing itself apart in a preposterous, nonsensical “War against Drugs” which not only was lost long ago but which grinds on now with almost zero benefit and something approaching 100% collateral damage. Support Transform to help end the war and promote a society at peace with itself.”
"President Bush said in his television address not long ago: 'Our outrage against drugs unites us as a nation!' A nation of what? Snoops and informers? Take a look at the knee-jerk, hard-core shits who react so predictably to the mere mention of drugs with fear, hate and loathing. Haven't we seen these same people before in various contexts? Storm troopers, lynch mobs, queer-bashers, Paki-bashers, racists - are these the people who are going to revitalize a 'Drug-free America'?"
Addressing the Scottish Parliament recently: "The real problem is not the drugs, it's the criminalisation of the community. And the fact is that this vast nation of social criminals, of whom you are all acquainted, is linked arterially to a corrosive, cancerous core of real criminals. The law is effectively the number one sponsor of organised crime." "The logical answer appears to be legalising. One thing is certain, doing nothing is not an option." "I firmly believe that hugely radical solutions are now required. It is about legalisation, not de-criminalisation." Asked whether he was referring to hard drugs such as heroin, cocaine and crack, Elton said: "Yes. I think we need to get the police, the government and the emergency services in front of the criminals, not behind the criminals. "It is now a self-evident fact that criminalisation hasn’t worked. All it has presented us with is organised crime." Source: Scotsman - 23.07.02 “There is no moral high ground to be had in blindly ignoring the utter failure of 30 years of drug legislation, while loudly calling for more of the same. No one who is content to bang on about tougher sentences and zero tolerance while leaving our crime-bedevilled communities to their grim fate has any cause to think themselves righteous.” “It is a matter of simple fact that a large proportion of people in this country, particularly young people, take drugs. Very few of them are drug addicts but they are all criminals under the law - the problem is that this vast nation of social criminals is linked arterially to a corrosive, cancerous core of real criminals.” “One thing is certain - doing nothing is absolutely not an option. A crisis is developing, a crisis created by the law and from which the law offers no protection. Both the Government and the media are failing the community. It is time for a proper adult debate and I personally believe that that debate must now encompass the possibility of some form of legalisation.” Source ‘Legalisation Might Be The Only Way To Halt The Drugs Epidemic’ Daily Telegraph - 8.11.02
"Complete prohibition of all chemical mind changers can be decreed, but cannot be enforced, and tends to create more evils than it cures."
(slightly confusing, this one) “Contrary to what journalists have attributed to me, I am against the legalisation of drugs and against the consumption of drugs” “What I said is that the Colombian drama is such that, to be exact, it is not possible to imagine that an end will be put to drug-trafficking, without consumption being legalised. That is the enormity of the tragedy that Colombians are having to suffer," Source: BBC news website Philip Pullman Author "People begin to take drugs because they like the effects, and that the harm done by addiction itself is considerably less than that caused by the shared needles, the adulteration, the disease and, above all, the crime that our present arrangements seem to be designed to bring about. Yes, I am in favour of legalising all drugs: that is not the same as advocating their use." Source:http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2001/nov/17/weekend7.weekend1
David Simon Author, journalist, producer, creator of the TV show 'The Wire' "The war on drugs is as disastrous as any government policy has been over the past 50 years...If a policy failed this unequivocally in any other part of US life you would cashier the generals. But the drug problem oppresses the poor. If rich kids were wandering the streets stealing car radios we would not be so complacent. But it is easier to brutalise the poor and discard them. We are not a manufacturing economy any more and we don't need our least educated people, so we marginalise them. The cynicism of Reagan and Thatcher still applies." Source:http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/may/20/wire-creator-allegorical-hurricane-katrina "I have long believed that they should be de-criminalised and that the drug problem – a massive one – should be tackled in a different way. No, I don`t know in what way, but I am sure there must be one, and also that there is not the will to investigate the question. I once put the point to a Chief Constable. ‘De-criminalise drugs? Absoloutely not.’ He almost shouted at me.I asked why.‘Just not. Absolutely not. No way.’ That is not an answer." Source http://www.spectator.co.uk/susanhill/6111248/allo-allo.thtml Mario Vargas Llosa Nobel Prize winner, writer, journalist, politician "The problem is not political but economic. There is a market for drugs that grows unstoppably, both in developed and underdeveloped countries, and the drug industry feeds it because it pays huge profits . The victories that the fight against drugs can show are insignificant compared to the number of consumers in the five continents. And it affects all social classes . The effects are harmful in health as much as in institutions. And like a cancer, it spreads and damages the Third World democracies." "Legalization involves risks, of course. And, therefore, the vast sums now spent on repression must be redirected towards educational campaigns and rehabilitation and information policies like the ones which, with regards to tobacco, have given great results." http://www.news.de/gesellschaft/855076545/nobelpreistraeger-fordert-legalisierung-aller-drogen/1/ Sir Paul McCartney The Beatles Ringo Starr The Beatles "I don't think the campaigns of the government in this country or America are doing anything. I think it's an absolute waste of resources, the way they're going about it. You go to clubs, everybody's taking stuff, that's how it is. Most lawyers have inhaled, they've had a joint, they've had a snort, they've had a drink. Then they carry on with their lives.""The downside of all that, like Jimi Hendrix, is we have lost a lot of musicians. But any law wouldn't have stopped him taking it." Source: interview in The Big Issue magazine quoted in The Daily Mail “WHY ALL DRUGS SHOULD BE LEGALISED BY RINGO - Campaigners' Fury at Ex-Beatle” 28.07.98 Sting Police Rock star Sting took heat in his native U.K. for saying Ecstasy should be decriminalized, especially when a young girl died after ingesting the designer drug. He still stands by those comments. And Sting went even further in a recent stopover in Toronto, saying the problem of heroin, cocaine and other narcotic abuse in the rock world and society in general is made worse by ineffectual laws and pointless moralizing. "For me drug addiction, and I by no means wish to minimize the problem, is a medical problem. As far as a moral or legal problem, I can't take that seriously," Sting said after playing a sold-out concert on his current world tour at the Molson Amphitheatre days earlier. "The only people who won from banning alcohol in the twenties, apart from Canada, were the Mafia. It's building up a society of crime." Source: BETSY POWELL ‘Sting stings the Establishment with drug beliefs’ Canadian Press 30.07.96 "I have never had heroin but since I moved to London in 1967, I have mixed with junkies on a casual and almost daily basis. I hate the idea even as I say it, but the only way to treat heroin is to legalise it." Source:Speech at the Welsh Assembly 03.11.05 Carlos Santana Santana “I really believe that as soon as we legalize and decriminalize marijuana we can actually afford a really good governor who won’t keep taking money away from education and from teachers and send him back to Hollywood where he can do ‘D’ movies and we can get an ‘A’ governor,” referring to formerovie action hero and California Gov. Source: www.rightpundits.com Peter Gabriel Genesis "I would rather the doctors were administering the drugs than the drug traffickers," Source: www.latimesblogs.latimes.com Human beings seem to have a propensity to want to take drugs in some form. It seems to be the propensity of human beings to want to use them. I think you have to take that as read, you know. "But then what do you do when it affects so many people's lives, and not in a good way? And then also you get a lot of violence at both ends of the scope," Jagger said. "That's the part that speaks to some sort of legalisation. Because that, you would hope, would help the violence from both ends of the supply line." Source http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/may/20/mick-jagger-drugs-isle-man
Actors Woody Harrelson Actor Source: Press Gazette
17.11. 05
Source: Widely quoted, but source unknown
Source: The Telegraph Newspaper, 08.06.08 Michael Douglas Actor "It's an interesting issue with all of these troubles that are going on... and trying to resolve things. It's an interesting thing that's being raised again. I'm questioning it. We're trying to get a lot of money for health and education and I'm wondering... you look at these gangs, and I look back at Prohibition. When we didn't allow alcohol, what did we have? We had gangs. We had big gangs. It's something that needs to be discussed a little more. It's an economic issue and a violence issue." Source: Starpulse.com 01.05.09 Gael Garcia Bernal Actor and director He 'has called for the legalisation of drugs in his native Mexico - to end the country's bloody civil unrest.' The 'Motorcycle Diaries' star said: "Drugs are illegal - therefore, there's a fight. I hope drugs become legalised in Mexico. If drugs were legal, there would be nothing to fight about." Source The Daily Express http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/124814Bernal-Legalise-drugs- "Don't get me started on the whole drugs thing. They should legalise the lot of them as far as I'm concerned," "That's the only hope. But it's far too complex an argument. There are so many 'legal' highs out there just now, which are incredibly dangerous because they haven't been tested and yet they are readily available to buy over the internet." "Yet some of the ones we do know about are illegal. It's a mad situation, we're chasing after something we can never catch up with. Anyone who pretends that the policies on drugs have worked is talking nonsense." Source http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/showbiz/news/a238895/jane-asher-calls-for-drug-legalisation.html
Jonathan Dimbleby TV presenter, writer, political commentator "I think the criminalisation of drugs globally has produced far greater trouble for everyone than it if were not criminal." Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/sep/20/jonathan-dimbleby-cocaine Nigella Lawson Columnist, food writer and TV presenter “..whatever one feels about alcohol or any other drug, it appears to be the case that the desire for intoxication is innate in humans. Any primitive society investigated by anthropologists depicts peoples who either danced themselves into whirling states of frenzy or who ate berries calculated to induce hallucinations (or both). Both my children, from the age when they were barely stable, used to twirl themselves around until they fell down helplessly dizzy. I agree, just because something is innate doesn't make it good, but whatever, prohibition can never be the answer.”
“For a long time I’ve felt that the war on drugs is a lost cause. As a parent I’m obviously aware of the dangers of drugs but its clear to me that these dangers are massively increased by the criminality involved in an illegal market. I’m supporting Transform because I’d like to see a more honest, rational and compassionate approach to the drug problem. ” Walter Cronkite Broadcaster CNN 'I covered the Vietnam War. I remember the lies that were told, the lives that were lost - and the shock when, twenty years after the war ended, former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara admitted he knew it was a mistake all along. I cannot help but wonder how many more lives, and how much more money, will be wasted before another Robert McNamara admits what is plain for all to see: the war on drugs is a failure.'Angus MacQueen Director and presenter "I used to think that making certain drugs illegal was simply common sense, this series is about why I've changed my mind. Because it doesn't work." Source: Our Drugs War (documentary) "The only way to control and channel this demand is to tell the truth. If a drug really kills, tell us. If it is really dangerous, tell us. But equally, be honest when it is not. Regulate supply via prescription or chemists." Source:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/01/angus-macqueen-drugs-trade-policy Jamie Oliver Chef, TV presenter, columnist Russell Brand Comedian, author, TV presenter “Make all drugs legal,” he says. “Drug addiction is not a crime, it's an illness, and if you criminalise people for being ill you create a complicated society. Drugs are the third biggest industry in the world, and making that industry criminal is daft – and that's speaking as a drug addict in recovery.” Dr Christian Jessen, Doctor on 'Embarrassing Bodies' "I ask this: can anyone point to a single instance where banning a potentially risky substance has actually reduced the harm to both the users and society at large? I can't. [...] We should also be considering alternatives to outright criminalisation. Prohibition did not work, and making drugs illegal has not worked. Drugs expert Professor David Nutt argues the case for a legal, though regulated, supply of drugs like mephedrone, ecstasy and cannabis, to reducing the undoubted harms of drug taking, and I agree with him." Source: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/health/article-23820667-the-danger-of-drug-laws.do The Dowager Duchess of Bedford (Transform Patron) “The battle as it has been fought up to now is not working, other than to increase crime and violence. Transform offers a logical alternative approach and should be supported to find the way to combat crime and offer people a better way to overcome their drug problems.” Source: Transform Annual Report 2005
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