Brad Pitt talks of his drugs past

Actor says that those days are 'long since passed', while supporting new documentary on the 'war on drugs'

Brad Pitt has said that his days of taking drugs are 'long since passed'.

The actor was speaking in Los Angeles in support of a new documentary by director Eugene Jarecki called 'The House I Live In' about the consequences of the US 'war on drug abuse', as coined by former president Richard Nixon in 1972.

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“My drug days are long since passed but it's certainly true that I could probably land in any city in any state and get you whatever you wanted,” he told the audience.

“I could find anything you were looking for. Give me 24 hours or so.”

He also took to task the ongoing 'war on drugs', calling it a 'charade'.

“It’s been this taboo subject forever - unless you're claiming victory for a bust or a win. It's absolutely taboo to talk about it as a failure. Which it is. It's an incredible failure," he said.

“And yet we still support this charade called the drug war. We have spent a trillion dollars. It's lasted for over 40 years. A lot of people have lost their lives for it. And yet we still talk about it like it's this success.

“The only way to end the war on drugs is to take the profit out of it. I know this comes with a whole other host of problems and I don't know if I'm actually presenting it as a reality, but we have to look at the what-if-everything-was-legal and people were allowed to make their own choices.

"And we were treating it less as a criminal issue and more as a sickness. People do drugs to escape. We're not talking about experimentation. People with long-term drug use are escaping.”