"In the last twenty years, the number of men and women incarcerated in the United States has quadrupled, approaching two million prisoners this year [2000]. Of course an enormous part of this explosive growth has been the huge increase in incarcerated drug offfenders. Currently there are almost half a million drug offenders incarcerated in the U.S., constituting 23% of state and local inmates, and 60% of federal prisoners. ... [The market for drugs] is currently perverted by extremist policies, not by the products involved, into an enormously destructive industry -- an industry that enriches violent criminals with hundreds of billions of dollars annually, that decimates inner cities where it feeds on poverty and hopelessness, and that corrupts democratic institutions and even entire governments. Why? Simply because we insist on making the use of certain drugs a criminal issue, rather than a public health issue." -- Chad Thevenot

"I can tell you this on a stack of Bibles: Prisons are archaic, brutal, unregenerative, overcrowded hell-holes where the inmates are treated like animals with absolutely not one humane thought given to what they are going to do once they are released. You're an animal in a cage and you're treated like one." -- Jimmy Hoffa

"Thanks entirely to the crackdown on various consensual crimes, prisons -- never designed for comfort in the first place -- are overcrowded. Cells designed for two inmates are holding three, sometimes four. Even spending, as we are, $5 billion per year on new prison construction, this overcrowding is likely to continue into the future. The first two things you'll notice on entering a penitentiary are the noise and the smell. The smell is body odor, cigarette smoke, unflushed or backing up toilets, diarrhea, vomit, and wafting through it all is the strange but clearly unpleasant aroma of the mysterious substances the prisoners are fed. The noise is a cacophony of televisions, radios -- all tuned to different stations -- boom boxes, and voices. Some of the voices are shouting. Some of the voices are babbling. ... There is absolutely no privacy. A toilet (with no toilet seat) is bolted to the wall of each cell. It is usually only inches from the bottom bunk. If it becomes clogged and will not flush, it may take several days to get fixed, but the prisoners have to use it anyway. There is little ventilation. This keeps the smells and any airbourne bacteria or viruses carefully contained. ... It is a textbook breeding ground for misery and disease. ... The average citizen would be reluctant to send even a real criminal, much less a hooker or a pot smoker, to such a hideous place." -- Peter McWilliams [Best selling author McWilliams died 14 June 2000, of complications of AIDS and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, while awaiting sentencing in federal court on marijuana charges.]

If you are a wealthy, white son or daughter of privilege, and you engage in illegal drug abuse, the main consequence is that you have to acknowledge that when you run for President. If you're poor and Black or Mexican, you go to jail. -- Rep. Barney Frank