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Milton Friedman on Drugs and prohibition

Well, maybe. Nobody can say with certainty what will happen along those lines. But I think it’s very dubious, because all of the experience with legal drugs is that there’s a tendency for people to go from the stronger to the weaker and not the other way around, just as you go from regular beer to light beer. That’s the tendency that there is: from cigarettes without filters to low-tar, filtered cigarettes, and so on. But I can’t rule out that what you’re saying might happen, but, and this is a very important but, the harm that would result from that would be much less than it is now, for several reasons.

Context. From a television interview about the war on drugs. The interviewer has asked whether, if drugs were legalized and crack cocaine were available at a low cost, it could be devastating, since it is said to be so pleasurable that more people could get it and stay on it for longer.

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. 67
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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. 67. https://miltonfriedman.org/quotes/nobody-can-say-certainty-stronger-to-weaker-regular-beer-light-beer-1991

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  1. Well the first and most important reform would be to eliminate the tax exemption of employer-provided medical care. … There’s no reason and logic, no reason on principle why medical care should be treated differently from other things. Food is just as essential to the life and health of a child. So is shelter and clothing. But those things we more or less let the private market take care of. What differentiates health? You might say, “Well, there are large costs involved. Sometimes you have to have big operations.” Well that’s what the private insurance is for. You have a large cost in a fire in a building. But that doesn’t mean that we have government fire insurance.

    Context. From a November 2005 interview with Peter Robinson, conducted for the World Health Congress and printed in the Hoover Digest as “How to Cure Health Care.” Asked how he would reform the U.S. health-care system if he could ignore political realities. The ellipsis marks Robinson’s follow-up (“You’d do that before abolishing Medicare and Medicaid.”) and Friedman’s “Yes.”

    How to Cure Health Care
    Interview, 2005, Interview by Peter Robinson for the World Health Congress, November 21, 2005; printed in Hoover Digest 2006 No. 4
    Checked against the sourceRead the transcript
  2. 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
    Checked against the sourceFind the book
  3. I see America with half the number of prisons, half the number of prisoners, ten thousand fewer homicides a year, inner cities in which there’s a chance for these poor people to live without being afraid for their lives, citizens who might be respectable who are now addicts not being subject to becoming criminals in order to get their drug, being able to get drugs for which they’re sure of the quality.

    Context. The opening exchange of a television interview about the war on drugs. The interviewer has asked how Friedman sees America changing for the better if drugs were legalized.

    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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