In the villages of my constituency, old people, venerable people used to smoke marijuana. Today, by imposing ban on natural substances, which people have been using for ages, from the time of Shiva, we have actually forced a lot of these people to move on to alcohol.

Criticising the ban on marijuana, as quoted in "Tathagata Satpathy: the MP who doesn't mind stirring the pot" Business Standard (19 December 2019)