I really believe that the marijuana laws are a terrible injustice. They make no sense scientifically, ethically, legally, or any way. They cost a fortune to enforce and we incarcerate hundreds of thousands of people who have done nothing else, but possess or distribute marijuana. Maybe it's because I'm a child of the 60's and marijuana has been such a positive part of my life. I have never seen it as being addictive, having spent weeks, and months, and days of my life (and years) without using marijuana in any form. For me, it's a kind of a sacrament, something that should be used wisely and in the context of a loving family existence. [...] There's a place for alcohol too, but there's no reason why adults shouldn't be allowed to do something which not only doesn't add harm to themselves or others, but is a way to enhance the beauty of life, the beauty of eating, of listening to music, of being with friends and family, of being with the one you love.

Marijuana: a drug that kills … no one – and let's put it in a time frame – ever. Illegal.

I say legalize marijuana because we have a chance to leave this world a better place for our children. Marijuana legalization is job creation, tax dollars, something to rejuvenate our pathetic economy. This is a multibillion-dollar industry. This is about jobs; this is about economics; this is about freedom. This is about taking our country back.

When you follow the straight and narrow, I tell you truth, it's the greatest high there is... When you have a mind that takes you in a thousand directions every minute. Where do you think Shakespeare got all of his characters from? ... Sanity – is to bridle all those horses and hitch them to one wagon, and then you lead those horses; you don't let them pull you in every direction. And that's why you shouldn't use marijuana... Marijuana was the most destructive element in my life... Marijuana is the most dangerous of all drugs. Having said that, maybe there are some medical conditions where one of the active principles... marinol or others, could be used to alleviate pain – good, get the medication... And the reason society is pushing you into getting high is to make certain that you don't know what the politicians are doing to you... The way the Chinese were doped on opium, you're being doped on marijuana. Marijuana may be a sedative for people who have been blessed with, or shall I say cursed with? – a one-string mind... "Oh wow, look at that – now I can play with two strings." But for people who've been given a violin for a brain, marijuana screws up your ability to play anything.

One's condition on marijuana is always existential. One can feel the importance of each moment and how it is changing one. One feels one's being, one becomes aware of the enormous apparatus of nothingness — the hum of a hi-fi set, the emptiness of a pointless interruption, one becomes aware of the war between each of us, how the nothingness in each of us seeks to attack the being of others, how our being in turn is attacked by the nothingness in others.

People can argue about the pluses and minuses of marijuana, but everyone knows it’s not a killer drug like heroin.

Marijuana? It's harmless really, unless you fashion it into a club and beat somebody over the head with it.
'Beards' (track 12) 5:29

How many murders, suicides, robberies, criminal assaults, holdups, burglaries and deeds of maniacal insanity it causes each year, especially among the young, can only be conjectured...No one knows, when he places a marijuana cigarette to his lips, whether he will become a joyous reveller in a musical heaven, a mad insensate, a calm philosopher, or a murderer...

Most marijuana smokers are colored people, jazz musicians, and entertainers. Their satanic music is driven by marijuana, and marijuana smoking by white women makes them want to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and others. It is a drug that causes insanity, criminality, and death — the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind.

The fact is, growing hemp for industrial purposes would make it a very useful plant. It can be a fiber for clothing, a source of paper, even an alternative fuel. Canada is already using hemp this way. I simply don't see that cannabis grows wild on earth just so humans can eradicate it.
Of course, the work of eradicating marijuana creates jobs within law enforcement. If we made it legal, and taxed it like we do tobacco and alcohol, maybe those law enforcement people could start paying more attention to murders and terrorism. I also think it's time for people to rise up against the prescription drug industry, the biggest opponent of legalization. You have to remember that they don't want anything out there that they can't make a profit from. Marijuana is a weed, and that means you can grow it, essentially free. This doesn't sit well with the pharmaceutical industry, and I think our Food and Drug Administration is nothing but a puppet whose strings the industry pulls.

There is no legitimate use whatsoever for marijuana. This is not medicine. This is bogus witchcraft. It has no place in medicine, no place in pain relief...

Marijuana is […] self-punishing. It makes you acutely sensitive and in this world, what worse punishment could there be?

When we think about the dangers of marijuana, they are about the equivalent of alcohol. Now, I don’t want to somehow talk about the dangers of alcohol or to besmirch the reputation of alcohol, because I think that every society should have intoxicants. We need intoxicants. And every society has always had intoxicants. So alcohol is fine...(intoxicants) make people more interesting, decreases anxiety. Alcohol is associated with a wide range of health-beneficial effects—decreased heart disease, decreased strokes, all of these sorts of things. The same can be true of a drug like marijuana—helps people sleep better, can decrease anxiety at the right doses.

I think that marijuana should not only be legal, I think it should be a cottage industry. It would be wonderful for the state of Maine. There's some pretty good homegrown dope. I'm sure it would be even better if you could grow it with fertilizers and have greenhouses.