Milton Friedman on Drugs and prohibition
We have as many criminals as we have because we have as many laws to break as we have. You take the situation in the United States. We have two million people in prison, four million people who are under parole or under supervision. Why? Because of our mistaken attempt to control what people put in their bodies. Prohibition of so-called drugs, of illegal drugs, is a major reason for all of those prisons. And those are victimless crimes, which should not be crimes.
Commanding Heights: Milton Friedman interview
Interview, 2000, PBS, “Where We Stand Today,” interview conducted October 1, 2000
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You can rigidly enforce only those laws that most people believe to be good laws, that is, laws that proscribe actions that they would avoid even in the absence of laws. When laws render illegal actions that many or most people regard as moral and proper, they can be enforced only by brute force. Speed laws are an obvious example; alcohol prohibition, a more dramatic one.
Why Government Is the ProblemJournal article, 1993, Hoover Institution Press, Essays in Public Policy no. 39, p. 2Checked against the sourceRead the originalLegalizing drugs would simultaneously reduce the amount of crime and raise the quality of law enforcement.
An Economist's Protest: Columns in Political EconomyBook, 1966, p. 161Not yet checkedEvery friend of freedom … must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence.
The Wall Street JournalColumn, 1989, Wall Street JournalNot yet checked
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