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Milton Friedman on Drugs and prohibition

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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Milton Friedman, “Tyranny of the Status Quo” (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984), Ch. 7 “Crime”, pp. 140–141 (with Rose D. Friedman). https://miltonfriedman.org/quotes/legalizing-drugs-reduce-crime-improve-law-enforcement-1984

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  1. Legalizing drugs would simultaneously reduce the amount of crime and raise the quality of law enforcement.
    An Economist's Protest: Columns in Political Economy
    Book, 1972, Collected in An Economist’s Protest: Columns in Political Economy (Thomas Horton and Company, 1972), “Prohibition and Drugs,” column of May 1, 1972, p. 161
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  2. 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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  3. When men do not regard governmental measures as just and right they will find a way around them. The effects extend beyond the original source, generate widespread disrespect for the law, and promote corruption and violence. We found this out to our cost in the 1920’s with Prohibition; in World War II with price control and rationing; today with drug laws.

    Context. From the second of two New York Times op-ed essays on the wage and price controls, October 1971, on what enforcing the Phase II pay board and price board would do to ordinary people.

    Morality and Controls: II
    Column, 1971, The New York Times, October 29, 1971; reprinted in the Congressional Record, Senate, October 29, 1971, p. 38202, introduced by Senator Mark O. Hatfield of Oregon, who dates the two essays to “the October 28 and 29 editions of the New York Times”. The reprint heads it only “Morality and Controls”; the date is the senator’s., Congressional Record, October 29, 1971, p. 38202
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