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Milton Friedman on Drugs and prohibition

Can any policy, however high-minded, be moral if it leads to widespread corruption, imprisons so many, has so racist an effect, destroys our inner cities, wreaks havoc on misguided and vulnerable individuals, and brings death and destruction to foreign countries?

Context. From a January 1998 New York Times article, written twenty-five years after President Nixon declared a “war on drugs,” listing the harms he attributes to drug prohibition. This question closes the article.

It’s Time to End the War on Drugs
Column, 1998, Hoover Digest, 1998, no. 2; first published in The New York Times, January 11, 1998, as “There’s No Justice in the War on Drugs.”
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Milton Friedman, “It’s Time to End the War on Drugs” (Hoover Digest, 1998, no. 2; first published in The New York Times, January 11, 1998, as “There’s No Justice in the War on Drugs.”, 1998). https://miltonfriedman.org/quotes/can-any-policy-be-moral-drug-war-1998

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He also said

  1. Drug prohibition is one of the most important factors that have combined to reduce our inner cities to their present state. The crowded inner cities have a comparative advantage for selling drugs. Although most customers do not live in the inner cities, most sellers do. Young boys and girls view the swaggering, affluent drug dealers as role models. Compared with the returns from a traditional career of study and hard work, returns from dealing drugs are tempting to young and old alike. … Al Capone epitomizes our earlier attempt at Prohibition; the Crips and Bloods epitomize this one.

    Context. From a January 1998 New York Times article, written twenty-five years after President Nixon declared a “war on drugs,” listing the harms he attributes to drug prohibition. Under the heading “Destruction of Inner Cities.” The ellipsis marks one sentence left out: that the young are not deterred by the bullets that fly in disputes between drug dealers, bullets that fly only because dealing drugs is illegal.

    It’s Time to End the War on Drugs
    Column, 1998, Hoover Digest, 1998, no. 2; first published in The New York Times, January 11, 1998, as “There’s No Justice in the War on Drugs.”
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  2. None of this means that government does not have a very real function. Indeed, the tragedy is that because government is doing so many things it ought not to be doing, it performs the functions it ought to be performing badly. The basic functions of government are to defend the nation against foreign enemies, to prevent coercion of some individuals by others within the country, to provide a means of deciding on our rules, and to adjudicate disputes.

    Context. From the essay’s survey of social problems he attributes to government. A footnote marker after the last word is omitted.

    Why Government Is the Problem
    Journal article, 1993, Hoover Institution Press, Essays in Public Policy no. 39, p. 6
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  3. Under a clean floating rate, there cannot be a foreign exchange crisis. There may be internal crises, as in Japan, but they would not be accompanied by a foreign exchange crisis. The reason is simple: Changes in exchange rates absorb the pressures that in a pegged regime lead to crises. The foreign exchange crisis that affected Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia did not spill over to New Zealand or Australia because those countries had floating exchange rates.

    Context. From an article on the East Asian financial crisis, which he traces to three elements: stagnation in Japan, the pegging of exchange rates to the U.S. dollar by national central banks, and the existence and policies of the International Monetary Fund. Earlier, he defines clean floating as a regime in which the central bank does not intervene in the market to affect the exchange rate.

    How Asia Fell
    Column, 1999, The Times (London), October 12, 1998, as “Clear Lessons to Be Learnt from the East Asian Episode”; reprinted with minor editorial changes in Hoover Digest 1999 No. 2
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