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Milton Friedman on Crime and the law

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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Milton Friedman, “Morality and Controls: II” (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., 1971), Congressional Record, October 29, 1971, p. 38202. https://miltonfriedman.org/quotes/measures-not-regarded-as-just-1971

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He also said

  1. Can any policy, however high-minded, be moral if it leads to widespread corruption, imprisons so many, has so racist an effect, destroys our inner cities, wreaks havoc on misguided and vulnerable individuals, and brings death and destruction to foreign countries?

    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. This question closes the article.

    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. 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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  3. The one adverse effect that legalization might have is that there very likely would be more people taking drugs. That’s not by any means clear. But, if you legalized, you destroy the black market, the price of drugs would go down drastically. And as an economist, lower prices tend to generate more demand. However, there are some very strong qualifications to be made to that. The effect of criminalization, of making drugs criminal, is to drive people from mild drugs to strong drugs.

    Context. From a television interview about the war on drugs. The interviewer has asked how legalization would adversely affect America. Asked next “In what way?”, Friedman explains that interdiction has made bulky marijuana scarcer and dearer, pushing people toward stronger drugs.

    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
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