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Celebrities and Public Figures Writers Iain Banks Writer and novelist, Transform patron Actors Woody Harrelson ActorJack Nicholson Actor Rupert Everett Actor Michael Douglas Actor TV Nigella Lawson Columnist, food writer and TV presenter Other Public Figures The Dowager Duchess of Bedford 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 Pulman 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
Carlos Fuentes Author
David Simon Author, Jounalist, Producer "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
Sir Paul McCartney 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
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 Lemmy Motorhead "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 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
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. ” 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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