McCaffrey:

We must acknowledge that drugs are wrong. They're not wrong simply because they're illegal; they're wrong because they destroy you physically, mentally, and morally. So we're going to have our law enforcement authorities uphold the law.

Zinberg:

Are the limitations on liberty that present drug laws impose essential to an overriding social purpose? In our view, not only are they not essential, but present laws do not even deal with the harm that undoubtedly flows from drug use. In fact, we suggest that the law itself imposes social as well as legal costs much graver than those of the drug use it seeks to prevent.

McCaffrey:

McCaffrey's view on legalization: "Nonsense!"

Zinberg:

Certainly decriminilization of marijuana should be extended beyond those few states which have adopted it, and federal penalties for use should be dropped.

McCaffrey:

There is no question that we will move ruthlessly to attack this threat to the American people.

Zinberg:

The overinclusive, punitive, and other condemnatory features of the law conflict with existing knowledge about drugs and, more importantly, conflict with the practice of millions of users who find drugs to be something less than the monolithic horror defined by the law.

McCaffrey:

There is no reason why we can't return America to a 1960's level, a pre-Vietnam-era level of drug use.

Zinberg:

Society must learn to tolerate a reasonable amount of drug use by those members willing and able to make that decision.

McCaffrey:

Over 20,000 Americans die from illicit drug use each year.

Zinberg:

The addict who is a "walking death" has been brought to that condition by the present state of the law.

McCaffrey:

Two-thirds of the 100,000 people in the federal prison system are there for drug-related offenses.

Zinberg:

We have a vast self-fulfilling prophecy: by defining a huge number of people as antisocial (criminal), we change their motives and create hatred, disruption, and true rebellion.

McCaffrey:

One-and-a-half million Americans are incarcerated, many for drug violations. No nation in the world has a higher incarceration rate.

Zinberg:

Failing to take into account the problems created by the law causes the situation to deteriorate; this in turn leads to the call for more and stronger laws. This is the vicious cycle that we must break.

McCaffrey:

Dealing with the problem of illegal drug abuse is more akin to dealing with cancer.

Zinberg:

The hopes people place in policemen and doctors have a basis in reality when it comes to a crime like a holdup or a disease like cancer. But when we come to a crime whose victim is thought to be society, and a medical problem which consists in otherwise normal, law-abiding people ingesting a substance thought to be harmful, are we not asking policemen and doctors to do things that fall outside their professional role?

McCaffrey:

We have made $1 million available to the Institute of Medicine at the National Academy of Sciences to ask physicians and scientists for all that is known about smoked pot, and what questions need to be asked about it.

Zinberg:

The misconception is that we must be able to give a drug a clean bill of health — a "final verdict" — before we stop criminalizing people who use it, and further that research can technically provide that answer.