The old system, the War on Drugs, was a train wreck.
The war on drugs is a war against the communities.
The war on drugs is being lost on a daily basis.
I was trying in 'The Power of the Dog' to write a brutally accurate in-your-face, if you will, description of 30 years in the war on drugs. And the effect that that had on people.
As someone who has researched and written about the Mexican cartels and the futile 'war on drugs' for coming on twenty years, I know how tough a subject it is. Mind-bending, soul-warping, heartbreaking, it challenges your intellect, your beliefs, your faith in humanity and God.
Having grown up in Oklahoma when it was one of the last states which prohibited liquor, I grew up with War On Drugs, where every teenager knew who the bootleggers were.
The War on Drugs employs millions - politicians, bureaucrats, policemen, and now the military - that probably couldn't find a place for their dubious talents in a free market, unless they were to sell pencils from a tin cup on street corners.
If you want to fight a war on drugs, sit down at your own kitchen table and talk to your own children.
After reading and studying and getting in touch with the amount of information that I had while I was researching to play Pablo, it just reinforced the idea that I had that the war on drugs is a big flop.
The war on drugs is a joke. We spend $40 billion a year, and the proof that it's a failure is that any kid can get almost any drug they want in any city in America within half an hour.
So many people view the war on drugs as a failure, as something that was perhaps intended and carried out with good intentions but very badly executed.
The war on drugs has made government more powerful, citizens less free, and hasn't helped users or addicts.
I have spent the past ten years in just about every war zone there was.
It's a war zone, my body, and one which has been through a great deal.
I spent my summers in a war zone because my parents were afraid that if we didn't go back to Palestine every single summer, we'd grow up to be Madonna.
In every war zone that I've been in, there has been a reality and then there has been the public perception of why the war was being fought. In every crisis, the issues have been far more complex than the public has been allowed to know.
I would come home and re-create every movie. Our backyard became a battleship, a war zone, a western town.
It's become a cliche to think of marriage as a disaster area and a war zone.
If you've got a camera, go to a war zone and tell a story.
The first war zone was declared by Great Britain. She gave us and the world notice of it on the 4th day of November, 1914. The zone became effective Nov. 5, 1914.
