Our nearly century-long experiment in banning marijuana has failed as abysmally as Prohibition did... In contrast, legalizing and taxing marijuana would bring in substantial sums that could be used to pay for schools, libraries or early childhood education.
Interpretation
The failed attempt to ban marijuana is likened to Prohibition, suggesting that legalization could provide financial benefits for public services.
In this quote, Kristof highlights the historical failure of marijuana prohibition, comparing it to the failed alcohol Prohibition in the early 20th century. He argues that rather than continuing a policy that has proven ineffective, society should consider the potential benefits of legalizing and taxing marijuana, which could generate significant revenue for vital public services such as education. This perspective prompts a reevaluation of the legal status of marijuana and its implications for society.
In practice
In a debate about drug policy, one might cite this quote to advocate for legalization.
More girls were killed in the last 50 years, precisely because they were girls, than men killed in all the wars in the 20th century. More girls are killed in this routine gendercide in any one decade than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the 20th century. The equivalent of 5 jumbo jets worth of women die in labor each day... life time risk of maternal death is 1,000x higher in a poor country than in the west. That should be an international scandal.
The fact that people will pay you to talk to people and travel to interesting places and write about what intrigues you, I am just amazed by that.
Abortion politics have distracted all sides from what is really essential: a major aid campaign to improve midwifery, prenatal care and emergency obstetric services in poor countries.
You will be judged in years to come by how you responded to genocide on your watch.
It’s time for a 21st-century abolitionist movement in the U.S and around the world.
Just a little help, a small security force, a bit of food, can save lives
There is nothing that war has ever achieved that we could not better achieve without it.
Throw away the light, the definitions, and say what you see in the dark.
Censure acquits the raven, but pursues the dove.
He was a great thundering paradox of a man.
However much we talk of the inexorable laws governing the life of individuals and of societies, we remain at the bottom convinced that in human affairs everything in more or less fortuitous. We do not even believe in the inevitability of our own death. Hence the difficulty of deciphering the present, of detecting the seeds of things to come as they germinate before our eyes. We are not attuned to seeing the inevitable.
Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men. Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth, now the living timber bursts with the new buds and spring comes round again. And so with men: as one generation comes to life, another dies away.
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