Political Quotes

On the recordApril 22, 1998
I appreciate him talking about what happens when government has too much money. And when they have too much money there, there is a lot of ideas that people have about how to spend that money. Unfortunately, one of the ideas that this administration has was, well, it was a good idea to hand out free needles to drug addicts. Now we have to look at this issue. You know, drugs are not legal. Marijuana, heroin, crack, cocaine, all those are against the law. But, yet, the paraphernalia, needles and other things that are used to inject those drugs into a human body all of a sudden are not just legal, all of a sudden, you have the Federal Government with a plan to use taxpayer dollars, Federal dollars to hand those needles to drug addicts. I am saying, you know, maybe we have got something wrong. We talked about trying to stop kids from smoking cigarettes. I think that is something we should do. I mean, we should send a message. We should have the moral courage to talk about this issue. Certainly teen smoking is not a good thing. But I question when we take a cigarette out of a kid's mouth and stick a needle in his arm, I mean, where are we going? What is the issue here? How can you justify that and morally move that idea forward? I think we have a bad message, certainly a bad message to drug addicts to all of a sudden say it cannot be too bad.
Said by
Dennis Hastert
Illinois

Editor's note · Context

Addressing the issue of government funding for needle distribution to drug addicts.

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