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Milton Friedman on Drugs and prohibition

Informers are not needed in crimes like robbery and murder because the victims of those crimes have a strong incentive to report the crime. In the drug trade, the crime consists of a transaction between a willing buyer and willing seller. Neither has any incentive to report a violation of law. On the contrary, it is in the self-interest of both that the crime not be reported. That is why informers are needed.

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 “The Use of Informers,” he goes on to say that informers and the immense sums at stake generate corruption and violations of the civil rights of innocent people.

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/informers-needed-willing-buyer-willing-seller-1998

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He also said

  1. 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
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  2. Although I wish the anarchists luck, since that’s the way we ought to be moving now. But I believe we need government to enforce the rules of the game. By prosecuting antitrust violations, for instance. We need a government to maintain a system of courts that will uphold contracts and rule on compensation for damages. We need a government to ensure the safety of its citizens—to provide police protection. But government is failing at a lot of these things that it ought to be doing because it’s involved in so many things it shouldn’t be doing.
    Interview with Milton Friedman
    Interview, 1973, Playboy, February 1973; reprinted in There’s No Such Thing as a Free Lunch (Open Court, 1975), p. 37
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  3. Legalizing drugs would simultaneously reduce the amount of crime and improve law enforcement. It is hard to conceive of any other single measure that would accomplish so much to promote law and order.

    Context. From Tyranny of the Status Quo (1984), written with Rose D. Friedman, in the chapter on crime, after arguing that marijuana prohibition repeats the pattern of alcohol Prohibition: growers post armed guards and gun battles follow, law enforcement personnel in some areas wink at the growers, and the government sprays the poison paraquat on marijuana fields. The authors conclude that prohibiting drugs does more harm, to users and to everyone else, than the drugs themselves.

    Tyranny of the Status Quo
    Book, 1984, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Ch. 7 “Crime”, pp. 140–141 (with Rose D. Friedman)
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