Skip to content
MiltonFriedman.org

Milton Friedman on Drugs and prohibition

In an ordinary free market business—let’s take potatoes, beef, anything you want—there are thousands of importers and exporters. Anybody can go into the business. But it’s very hard for a small person to go into the drug importing business because our interdiction efforts essentially make it enormously costly. So, the only people who can survive in that business are these large Medellin cartel kind of people who have enough money so they can have fleets of airplanes, so they can have sophisticated methods, and so on. … What more could a monopolist want? He’s got a government who makes it very hard for all his competitors and who keeps the price of his products high. It’s absolutely heaven.

Context. From a television interview about the war on drugs. Friedman has just said that, from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel; asked whether it is doing a good job of it, he answers “Excellent” and explains. The ellipsis leaves out a sentence saying that by keeping goods out and arresting local marijuana growers, the government keeps the price of these products high.

America’s Drug Forum interview
Interview, 1991, With Randy Paige, taped at the International Conference on Drug Policy Reform, Washington, November 1991; reprinted as Ch. 8 “On Liberty and Drugs” in Friedman & Szasz on Liberty and Drugs, ed. Arnold S. Trebach and Kevin B. Zeese (Drug Policy Foundation Press, 1992), p. 72
Checked against the sourceFind the book

Where this comes from

Checked against the sourceThe wording was checked against the work itself.

Cite this passage

Milton Friedman, “America’s Drug Forum interview” (1991), With Randy Paige, taped at the International Conference on Drug Policy Reform, Washington, November 1991; reprinted as Ch. 8 “On Liberty and Drugs” in Friedman & Szasz on Liberty and Drugs, ed. Arnold S. Trebach and Kevin B. Zeese (Drug Policy Foundation Press, 1992), p. 72. https://miltonfriedman.org/quotes/drug-importing-interdiction-medellin-cartel-monopolist-heaven-1991

Quoted for commentary and research. Rights in the underlying work remain with its rights holder, so cite the work itself, not only this page.

Topics

He also said

  1. It’s a moral problem that the government is making into criminals people, who may be doing something you and I don’t approve of, but who are doing something that hurts nobody else. Most of the arrests for drugs are for possession by casual users. Now here’s somebody who wants to smoke a marijuana cigarette. If he’s caught, he goes to jail. Now is that moral? Is that proper? I think it’s absolutely disgraceful that our government, supposed to be our government, should be in the position of converting people who are not harming others into criminals, of destroying their lives, putting them in jail. That’s the issue to me.

    Context. From a television interview about the war on drugs. Just before, Friedman says that it is also a moral problem that the government’s drug war is causing thousands of additional killings each year. Just after, he says the money spent on the drug war is the trivial part of the problem.

    America’s Drug Forum interview
    Interview, 1991, With Randy Paige, taped at the International Conference on Drug Policy Reform, Washington, November 1991; reprinted as Ch. 8 “On Liberty and Drugs” in Friedman & Szasz on Liberty and Drugs, ed. Arnold S. Trebach and Kevin B. Zeese (Drug Policy Foundation Press, 1992), p. 71
    Checked against the sourceFind the book
  2. In my opinion, the strongest argument for free enterprise is that it prevents anybody from having too much power, whether that person is a government official, a trade union official, or a business executive. It forces them to put up or shut up. They either have to deliver the goods, produce something that people are willing to pay for, or willing to buy, or else they have to go into a different business.

    Context. In the panel discussion that closes the episode, after saying he is pro-free enterprise rather than pro-business. These are the last words of the discussion.

    The Tyranny of Control
    Television, 1980, PBS, vol. 2, at 55:48
    Checked against the sourceWatch it
  3. In a free society, it is hard for “good” people to do “good,” but that is a small price to pay for making it hard for “evil” people to do “evil,” especially since one man's good is anther's evil.

    Context. Answering readers who say social problems are too urgent to wait for the political process.

    A Friedman Doctrine—The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits
    Column, 1970, The New York Times Magazine, September 13, 1970, Section SM, p. 17
    Checked against the sourceRead the transcript

Think this quote is wrong, misattributed, or missing context? Report it and it gets fixed, not argued with.