Political Quotes

“Madam Chair, as we near the midnight hour, as Wilson Pickett would say: In the midnight hour, we drift off to ``Reefer Madness'' type of logic. We saw ``Reefer Madness'' in the thirties, and it has come back to Congress here 80-some-odd years later. The fact is we are not talking about marijuana for children. Children shouldn't be doing marijuana, nor should they be smoking tobacco, nor should they be drinking beer or alcohol. We are talking about adults, and we are talking about: Should adults who are behaving according to the laws in the States in which they live--and the States passed certain laws in Colorado and Washington concerning legalization, and in 20-some-odd States and the District of Columbia passed medical marijuana laws. Should those people who abide by the laws of the State, the laws that are closest to them, that some on the other side of the aisle would regularly say we should defer to the States and we should let the States set the policies for everybody--we do that on a lot of things, but we sometimes don't do it on these particular issues. The fact that people are being incarcerated in great numbers and losing their liberty and having a scarlet ``M'' put on their chest that denies them public housing on occasions, denies them scholarships, and denies them opportunities to work is wrong.…”