Milton Friedman Quotes About Drugs

Quotes about: Drugs

• Every friend of freedom... must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence.

  Milton Friedman

  Army, Jail, Alcohol

  "An Open Letter to Bill Bennett". Milton Friedman, The Wall Street Journal, September 7, 1989.

• See, if you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel. That's literally true.

  Milton Friedman

  War, Drug Cartels, Government

  "Friedman & Szasz On Liberty and Drugs". Interview with Randy Paige on "America's Drug Forum", www.druglibrary.org. 1991.

• When a private enterprise fails, it is closed down; when a government enterprise fails, it is expanded. Isn't that exactly what's been happening with drugs?

  Milton Friedman

  Weed, Marijuana, Government

• I'm in favor of legalizing drugs. According to my values system, if people want to kill themselves, they have every right to do so. Most of the harm that comes from drugs is because they are illegal.

  Milton Friedman

  People, Drug, Favors

  "‪If Ignorance Is Bliss, Why Aren't There More Happy People?". Book by John Mitchinson, p. 87, 2009.

• Drugs are a tragedy for addicts. But criminalizing their use converts that tragedy into a disaster for society, for users and non-users alike. Our experience with the prohibition of drugs is a replay of our experience with the prohibition of alcoholic beverages.

  Milton Friedman

  Drug, Tragedy, Use

• Legalizing drugs would simultaneously reduce the amount of crime and raise the quality of law enforcement. Can you conceive of any other measure that would accomplish so much to promote law and order?

  Milton Friedman

  Order, Law, Alcohol

  Milton Friedman (1972). “An economist's protest: columns in political economy”

• So long as large sums of money are involved - and they are bound to be if drugs are illegal - it is literally impossible to stop the traffic, or even to make a serious reduction in its scope.

  Milton Friedman

  Long, Drug, Serious

  Milton Friedman, Rose D. Friedman (1985). “Tyranny of the status quo”

• Our emphasis here is based not only on the growing seriousness of drug-related crimes, but also on the belief that relieving our police and our courts from having to fight losing battles against drug use will enable their energies and facilities to be devoted more fully to combating other forms of crime.

  Milton Friedman

  Fighting, Blow, Law

  "Tyranny of the status quo".

• One role of prohibition is in making the drug market more lucrative.

  Milton Friedman

  Drug, Roles, Corruption

• I'd like to promote lots of things. I'd like to promote elimination of drug prohibition. I'd like to promote parental choice in education through vouchers. Those are two things I think are very urgent and important. They're both more important than the harm which Social Security will do.

  Milton Friedman

  Thinking, Two, Choices

  Source: rightwingnews.com

• Had drugs been decriminalized, crack would never have been invented and there would today be fewer addicts... The ghettos would not be drug-and-crime-infested no-man's lands... Colombia, Bolivia and Peru would not be suffering from narco-terror, and we would not be distorting our foreign policy because of it.

  Milton Friedman

  Ghetto, Men, Land

• If even a small fraction of the money we now spend on trying to enforce drug prohibition were devoted to treatment and drug rehabilitation, in an atmosphere of compassion not punishment, the reduction in drug usage and in the harm done to users could be dramatic.

  Milton Friedman

  Compassion, Punishment, Drug

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