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Milton Friedman on Drugs and prohibition

On ethical grounds, do we have the right to use the machinery of government to prevent an individual from becoming an alcoholic or a drug addict? For children, almost everyone would answer at least a qualified yes. But for responsible adults, I, for one, would answer no. Reason with the potential addict, yes. Tell him the consequences, yes. Pray for and with him, yes. But I believe that we have no right to use force, directly or indirectly, to prevent a fellow man from committing suicide, let alone from drinking alcohol or taking drugs.

Context. From his Newsweek column of May 1, 1972, on President Nixon’s “war on drugs.” He quoted this passage himself in 1998, saying he had criticized that policy “on both moral and expediential grounds.”

Prohibition and Drugs
Column, 1972, Newsweek, May 1, 1972; quoted by Friedman himself in “It’s Time to End the War on Drugs,” Hoover Digest, 1998, no. 2 (first published in The New York Times, January 11, 1998).
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Milton Friedman, “Prohibition and Drugs” (Newsweek, May 1, 1972; quoted by Friedman himself in “It’s Time to End the War on Drugs,” Hoover Digest, 1998, no. 2 (first published in The New York Times, January 11, 1998)., 1972). https://miltonfriedman.org/quotes/no-right-use-force-prevent-drinking-taking-drugs-1972

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He also said

  1. What kind of society isn’t structured on greed? … So the problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm. It seems to me that the great virtue of capitalism is that it’s that kind of system. Because under capitalism, the power of any one individual over his fellow man is relatively small.
    Interview with Milton Friedman
    Interview, 1973, Playboy, February 1973; reprinted in There’s No Such Thing as a Free Lunch (Open Court, 1975), p. 31
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  2. The harm to us from the addiction of others arises primarily from the fact that drugs are illegal. It has been estimated that from one third to one half of all violent and property crime in the United States is committed either by drug addicts engaged in crime to finance their habit, or by conflicts among competing groups of drug pushers, or in the course of the importation and distribution of illegal drugs. Legalize drugs, and street crime would drop dramatically and immediately.

    Context. From Tyranny of the Status Quo (1984), written with Rose D. Friedman, in the chapter on crime, after arguing that government may stop drug users from harming third parties but that prohibiting adults’ own drug use does more harm than good, and that addicts themselves would be better off if drugs were legal. Here they turn to the harm that others’ addiction does to non-users.

    Tyranny of the Status Quo
    Book, 1984, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Ch. 7 “Crime”, p. 139 (with Rose D. Friedman)
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  3. You can rigidly enforce only those laws that most people believe to be good laws, that is, laws that proscribe actions that they would avoid even in the absence of laws. When laws render illegal actions that many or most people regard as moral and proper, they can be enforced only by brute force. Speed laws are an obvious example; alcohol prohibition, a more dramatic one.

    Context. From the section headed “Lawlessness and Crime.”

    Why Government Is the Problem
    Journal article, 1993, Hoover Institution Press, Essays in Public Policy no. 39, p. 2
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