The Better Chancery Practice Blog

“Imagine if the government chased sick people with diabetes, put a tax on insulin and drove it to the black market, told doctors they couldn’t treat them, then sent them to jail. If we did that everyone would know we were crazy. Yet we do practically the same thing every day in the week to sick people hooked on drugs.” – Billie Holiday, 1956

“Today, our nation is fighting two wars: one abroad and one at home. While the war in Iraq is in the headlines, the other war is still being fought on our own streets. Its casualties are the wasted lives of our own citizens. I am speaking of the war on drugs. And 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.” – Walter Cronkite, 2009

“There were fewer than 3,000 overdose deaths in 1979, when a heroin epidemic was raging in U.S. cities. There were fewer than 5,000 recorded in 1988, around the height of the crack epidemic. More than 64,000 Americans died from drug overdoses last year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” – Mike Strobe, 2017