“You can at least let sick people have marijuana because it's helpful. Why don't we handle the drugs like we handle alcohol?. Alcohol's a deadly drug. The real deadly drugs are the prescription drugs, they kill more people than the illegal drugs.I think the federal war on drugs is a total failure. The drug war is out of control.”

-Ron Paul, Liberty Defined, p.156

"And today the absurdity on this war on drugs has just been horrible. Now the federal government takes over and overrules states where state laws permit medicinal marijuana 1 for people dying of cancer. The federal government goes in and arrests these people, put them in prison with mandatory sentences. This war on drugs is totally out of control. If you want to regulate cigarettes and alcohol and drugs, it should be at the state level. That’s where I stand on it. The federal government has no prerogatives on this."

-Ron Paul 

"I would absolutely never use the federal government to enforce the law against anybody using medical marijuana. There are a couple of reasons for that. We talk about medical marijuana and, as a physician, it's controversial in conventional medicine. I happen to believe that it is probably very, very helpful, and I bet you there are a few testimonials for that. But even in the legislative sense - in the political sense - the federal government doesn't have this authority. I mean, if a state especially comes in and says you can use it, like some of these states have, then for the federal government to come in and say that we are going to override the state law, even if it's just a modest legalization, and override this law, that's an offense just on the issue of states' rights. But how can people do this? How can an individual talk to you like that, and still say, 'Well, I'm a compassionate conservative - I want you to suffer'? That's what they're saying. You know, it's outrageous." 

-Ron Paul

As a physician, Dr. Paul understands that medical marijuana is a controversial, but personally believes it to be very helpful for some patients.  As president, his medical marijuana policy would be quite different from that of the current and previous administrations. State dispensary raids by federal authorities would be a thing of the past, and states who are considering medical marijuana legislation would no longer be threatened with negative federal sanctions. When questioned by medical marijuana patient Clayton Holton in 2007, Paul responded that he would absolutely never use the federal government to enforce law against anyone using marijuana. On the issue, Ron Paul takes the constitutional, 10th amendment approach and views the federal government as having no authority to regulate the medical use of any substance, and would leave the regulation to the states. This would result in overnight de facto acceptance of the laws of the sixteen states in which medicinal cannabis is the law.