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Milton Friedman on Drugs and prohibition

It does harm a great many other people, but primarily because it’s prohibited. There are an enormous number of innocent victims now. You’ve got the people whose purses are stolen, who are bashed over the head by people trying to get enough money for their next fix. You’ve got the people killed in the random drug wars. You’ve got the corruption of the legal establishment. You’ve got the innocent victims who are taxpayers who have to pay for more and more prisons, and more and more prisoners, and more and more police. You’ve got the rest of us who don’t get decent law enforcement because all the law enforcement officials are busy trying to do the impossible.

Context. From a television interview about the war on drugs. The interviewer has just suggested that critics such as the former drug czar William Bennett would say the sale and distribution of illegal drugs harms other people, so government has to step in; “it” is that trade. He goes on to name the people of Colombia and Peru, killed because the United States cannot enforce its own drug laws.

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. 70
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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. 70. https://miltonfriedman.org/quotes/harm-many-other-people-primarily-because-prohibited-innocent-victims-1991

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He also said

  1. In 1970, 200,000 people were in prison. Today, 1.6 million people are: eight times as many in absolute number, six times as many relative to the increased population. In addition, 2.3 million are on probation and parole. The attempt to prohibit drugs is by far the major source of the horrendous growth in the prison population. There is no light at the end of that tunnel. How many of our citizens do we want to turn into criminals before we yell "enough"?

    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 “Filling the Prisons.” The figures are his, for 1970 and for the time of writing.

    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. 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
  3. 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.

    Context. In a PBS interview for the series Commanding Heights, on the Internet making it easier for criminals to conduct their affairs, where he said one has to distinguish between criminals and criminals.

    Commanding Heights: Milton Friedman interview
    Interview, 2000, PBS, “Where We Stand Today,” interview conducted October 1, 2000
    Checked against the sourceRead the transcript

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