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Milton Friedman on Drugs and prohibition

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
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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/moral-problem-government-making-criminals-casual-users-1991

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He also said

  1. 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
    Checked against the sourceFind the book
  2. In an ordinary free market business—let’s take potatoes, beef, anything you want—there are thousands of importers and exporters. Anybody can go into the business. But it’s very hard for a small person to go into the drug importing business because our interdiction efforts essentially make it enormously costly. So, the only people who can survive in that business are these large Medellin cartel kind of people who have enough money so they can have fleets of airplanes, so they can have sophisticated methods, and so on. … What more could a monopolist want? He’s got a government who makes it very hard for all his competitors and who keeps the price of his products high. It’s absolutely heaven.

    Context. From a television interview about the war on drugs. Friedman has just said that, from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel; asked whether it is doing a good job of it, he answers “Excellent” and explains. The ellipsis leaves out a sentence saying that by keeping goods out and arresting local marijuana growers, the government keeps the price of these products high.

    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. 72
    Checked against the sourceFind the book
  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
    Checked against the sourceFind the book

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