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Milton Friedman on Drugs and prohibition

I’m an economist, but the economics problem is strictly tertiary. It’s a moral problem. It’s a problem of the harm which government is doing. I have estimated statistically that the prohibition of drugs produces, on the average, ten thousand additional homicides a year. It’s a moral problem that the government is going around killing ten thousand people.

Context. From a television interview about the war on drugs. The interviewer has asked whether the whole drug problem is not an economic one; Friedman has answered that it is not an economic problem at all but a moral one, and the interviewer has asked “In what way?”

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
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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. 71. https://miltonfriedman.org/quotes/economist-economics-problem-strictly-tertiary-moral-problem-1991

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He also said

  1. I see America with half the number of prisons, half the number of prisoners, ten thousand fewer homicides a year, inner cities in which there’s a chance for these poor people to live without being afraid for their lives, citizens who might be respectable who are now addicts not being subject to becoming criminals in order to get their drug, being able to get drugs for which they’re sure of the quality.

    Context. The opening exchange of a television interview about the war on drugs. The interviewer has asked how Friedman sees America changing for the better if drugs were legalized.

    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. 65
    Checked against the sourceFind the book
  2. 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
  3. What business do we have destroying and leading to the killing of thousands of people in Colombia because we cannot enforce our own laws? If we could enforce our laws against drugs, there would be no market for these drugs. You wouldn’t have Colombia in the state it’s in.

    Context. From a television interview about the war on drugs. He has been listing the innocent victims of drug prohibition at home (people robbed by addicts, those killed in the drug wars, taxpayers paying for prisons), and ends the list with “the people of Colombia and Peru and so on.”

    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), pp. 70–71
    Checked against the sourceFind the book

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