Milton Friedman

Reuters Photo: Milton Friedman in an undated photo courtesy of the University of Chicago News Office. Friedman,...

Kevin Zeese wrote:

*Milton Friedman on Liberty and Drugs*

*“Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men”*

***By Kevin Zeese***

Since the death last week of Milton Friedman I’ve been thinking about the times that my life crossed paths with his. I’ve got a photograph on my bookshelf of me with him at the conference of the Drug Policy Foundation in 1991. In that year we gave him our most prestigious award, a lifetime achievement award named in honor of noted philanthropist and Chicago commodities trader, Richard Dennis.

When we gave Dr. Friedman the award it was controversial. Many in the reform movement are liberal Democrats who are offended by Friedman’s view that “the government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.” But, no doubt all in the drug policy reform movement would agree with that statement when it is applied to the government’s never-ending war on drugs. As Friedman correctly said: “Most of the harm that comes from drugs is because they are illegal.”

Indeed, Friedman came to the conclusion about the futility of drug prohibition early. When President Nixon started the modern war on drugs he wrote a column in /Newsweek/ criticizing the policy. He warned that it would not reduce addiction but instead would promote crime and corruption repeating the mistake of alcohol prohibition. He concluded: “So long as large sums of money are involved-and they are bound to be if drugs are illegal-it is literally hopeless to expect to end the traffic or even to reduce seriously its scope. In drugs, as in other areas, persuasion and example are likely to be far more effective than the use of force to shape others in our image.” See “Prohibition and Drugs,” at:

http://www.druglibrary.org/special/friedman/prohibition_and_drugs.htm

In 1989 when drug czar Bill Bennet was escalating the drug war on behalf of President George H.W. Bush, Friedman wrote an open letter in the /Wall Street Journal/ reminding him that the problems he was trying to combat were the made worse by prohibition. He warned that crack was a product of prohibition correctly pointing out “it was invented because the high cost of illegal drugs made it profitable to provide a cheaper version.” He concluded the letter:

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

“This plea comes from the bottom of my heart. Every friend of freedom, and I know you are one, 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.”

See “An Open Letter to Bill Bennett, April 1990 at:

http://www.fff.org/freedom/0490e.asp

Friedman’s view of the harms from drugs was not only the wasted money – now about $1 billion per week – but more so the destruction of inner cities, racially unfair incarceration, corruption of the police, wars in Colombia, Mexico and other countries that cost thousands of lives and the corruption of foreign economies as well as our own. The drug war has spurred the largest prison system in history with more than 2 million behind bars – one in four of the world’s prisoners residing in the land of the free. As Friedman pointed out: “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.”

When Friedman gave his key note address at the Drug Policy Foundation conference in 1991 he did not limit his talk to drug policy. He put forward a wider ranging analysis that covered a host of issues – schools, housing, medical care and the post office. Of course, this just added to the controversy around his nomination. But it was an opportunity to hear a perspective that no doubt held important truths on the limits and fallibility of government – truths that could lead to more sensible approaches whether you completely agreed with Friedman or not. (You can read a transcript of his speech and the questions and answers at:

http://www.druglibrary.org/special/friedman/socialist.htm

Friedman also appeared on a television show we produced, / America’s Drug Forum/, and I crossed paths with him at two conferences at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and with Arnold Trebach edited a book on the writings of him and psychiatrist Thomas Szasz. He always put forward a clear vision and persistent attitude. Indeed, his persistence is something all advocates can learn from – he went from being ignored and shunned to winning the nobel prize for economics and being an adviser to presidents. His life should give all of us hope that change is possible, indeed it is inevitable, and if we persist change will move in our direction.

Kevin Zeese is president of Common Sense for Drug Policy.

For more on Milton Friedman you can purchase “On Liberty and

Drugs” edited by Arnold Trebach and Kevin Zeese at:

http://www.amazon.com/Friedman-Szasz-Liberty-Drugs-Prohibition/dp/1879189054

Many of his writings are included in The Schaeffer Library of Drug Policy at:

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Misc/friedm1.htm

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Nobel-winning economist Milton Friedman dead at 94

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Milton Friedman, one of the most influential economists of the past century and winner of a 1976 Nobel Prize, died on Thursday morning of heart failure at a San Francisco-area hospital, a spokeswoman for his family said. He was 94.

Friedman preached free enterprise in the face of government regulation and advocated monetary policy that called for steady growth in money supply.

How his ideas were implemented by governments and central banks and how Friedman helped popularize them made him perhaps the world's best-known economist, said Gary Becker, who won the 1992 Nobel Prize for economics.

"If you had to ask people across the world to name an economist, by far his name would be the most common," Becker told Reuters in a telephone interview. "He could express the most complicated economic ideas in the most simple language."

Brooklyn-born Friedman's ideas played a pivotal role in informing the governing philosophies of world leaders like former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and former U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

"Milton Friedman revived the economics of liberty, when it had been all but forgotten. He was an intellectual freedom fighter. Never was there a less dismal practitioner of 'the dismal science' (economics)," Thatcher said in a statement.

"I am deeply saddened at the passing of Milton Friedman," former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said. "He had been a fixture in my life both professionally and personally for a half century. My world will not be the same."

St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank President William Poole, another noted monetarist, said much of modern central bank thinking stemmed from Friedman's work. Poole said Friedman's most important contribution was to bring theoretical economic thinking to bear on a range of public policy issues.

INFLUENCED REAGAN

Friedman's ideas on public policy were seized by Reagan, who shared Friedman's interest in low taxes and less regulation, said Martin Anderson, a Hoover Institution fellow and former domestic and economic policy adviser to Reagan.

"You look at what Reagan did, it was what Milton had been advocating for a long time," Anderson said. "What Milton did was to confirm what he (Reagan) thought and make it more confident, and that became 'Reaganomics."'

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who recruited Friedman as an adviser after becoming governor, said in a statement, "When I was first exposed to his powerful writings about money, free markets and individual freedom, it was like getting hit by a thunderbolt. I wound up giving copies of his books and 'Free to Choose' videos to hundreds of my friends and acquaintances."

Becker said Friedman's calls for free markets profoundly influenced governments across the world. "He was the single most important force for setting out the argument for why free-market economists do better," Becker said. "Those ideas impact everybody."

Additionally, Friedman's belief in steady and predictable monetary policy as the surest guarantee against excessive fluctuations in the general price level and economic activity held tremendous sway with central bankers, Becker said.

CONTROVERSIAL

In 1976, Friedman's years of teaching and nearly two dozen books were recognized with the Nobel Prize for economic science. Friedman, however, was not without controversy.

His work was not initially popular, emerging at a time when public spending and government intervention were widely credited with helping end the worldwide depression of the 1930s. His Nobel ceremony in Stockholm prompted a large turnout of demonstrators who criticized him for the economic advice he provided to the government of Augusto Pinochet, who oversaw Chile's 17-year dictatorship in which some 3,000 leftists were killed.

Later, Friedman raised his profile further as a columnist and contributing editor for Newsweek magazine and through frequent television appearances.

In a retrospective on his work, Friedman traced his roots and those of the so-called Chicago school of economics back to 18th-century Scottish economist Adam Smith. He moved to California in 1977, when he became a senior research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

(Additional reporting by Alister Bull in Washington)

Image:http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/nm/20061117/2006_11_16t125559_450x365_us_friedman.jpg? Caption:Reuters Photo: Milton Friedman in an undated photo courtesy of the University of Chicago News Office. Friedman,...

Milton Friedman was a long time supporter of drug reform.

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Reprint and publish: DrugSense Weekly (DSW), Fri, 17 Nov 2006

The Wall Street Journal, Thursday, September 7, 1989.

AN OPEN LETTER TO BILL BENNETT BY MILTON FRIEDMAN

In Oliver Cromwell's eloquent words, "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken" about the course you and President Bush urge us to adopt to fight drugs. The path you propose of more police, more jails, use of the military in foreign countries, harsh penalties for drug users, and a whole panoply of repressive measures can only make a bad situation worse. The drug war cannot be won by those tactics without undermining the human liberty and individual freedom that you and I cherish.

You are not mistaken in believing that drugs are a scourge that is devastating our society. You are not mistaken in believing that drugs are tearing asunder our social fabric, ruining the lives of many young people, and imposing heavy costs on some of the most disadvantaged among us. You are not mistaken in believing that the majority of the public share your concerns. In short, you are not mistaken in the end you seek to achieve.

Your mistake is failing to recognize that the very measures you favor are a major source of the evils you deplore. Of course the problem is demand, but it is not only demand, it is demand that must operate through repressed and illegal channels. Illegality creates obscene profits that finance the murderous tactics of the drug lords; illegality leads to the corruption of law enforcement officials; illegality monopolizes the efforts of honest law forces so that they are starved for resources to fight the simpler crimes of robbery, theft and assault.

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. I append excerpts from a column that I wrote in 1972 on "Prohibition and Drugs." The major problem then was heroin from Marseilles; today, it is cocaine from Latin America. Today, also, the problem is far more serious than it was 17 years ago: more addicts, more innocent victims; more drug pushers, more law enforcement officials; more money spent to enforce prohibition, more money spent to circumvent prohibition.

Had drugs been decriminalized 17 years ago, "crack" would never have been invented (it was invented because the high cost of illegal drugs made it profitable to provide a cheaper version) and there would today be far fewer addicts. The lives of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of innocent victims would have been saved, and not only in the U.S. The ghettos of our major cities would not be drug-and-crime-infested no-man's lands. Fewer people would be in jails, and fewer jails would have been built.

Colombia, Bolivia and Peru would not be suffering from narco-terror, and we would not be distorting our foreign policy because of narco-terror. Hell would not, in the words with which Billy Sunday welcomed Prohibition, "be forever for rent," but it would be a lot emptier.

Decriminalizing drugs is even more urgent now than in 1972, but we must recognize that the harm done in the interim cannot be wiped out, certainly not immediately. Postponing decriminalization will only make matters worse, and make the problem appear even more intractable.

Alcohol and tobacco cause many more deaths in users than do drugs. Decriminalization would not prevent us from treating drugs as we now treat alcohol and tobacco: prohibiting sales of drugs to minors, outlawing the advertising of drugs and similar measures. Such measures could be enforced, while outright prohibition cannot be. Moreover, if even a small fraction of the money we now spend on trying to enforce drug prohibition were devoted to treatment and rehabilitation, in an atmosphere of compassion not punishment, the reduction in drug usage and in the harm done to the users could be dramatic.

This plea comes from the bottom of my heart. Every friend of freedom, and I know you are one, 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. A country in which shooting down unidentified planes "on suspicion" can be seriously considered as a drug-war tactic is not the kind of United States that either you or I want to hand on to future generations.

Note: Milton Friedman, 1976 Nobel Laureate in economics, died earlier this week. This piece was originally published in The Wall Street Journal, Thursday, September 7, 1989.

Section: Feature Article

http://www.drugsense.org/dsw/2006/ds06.n475.html#sec6

http://www.drugsense.org/current.htm

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OPINION: Robyn Blumner: Milton Friedman made right call on legalization

The economist who died this month understood decades ago that drug prohibition was bad for public policy, the economy and society.

Robyn Blumner, Tribune Media Services, Tribune Media Services Published: November 26, 2006

In 1971, when Richard Nixon declared his "War on Drugs," calling for harsher penalties and stricter enforcement of drug laws, the renowned Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman had a John Lennon moment. He suggested we give peace a chance.

To Friedman, who died earlier this month at 94, drug prohibition was unsound public policy, economic insanity and inherently immoral. It wasn't the drug user who was immoral, as the political world asserted with so much vim and vinegar, the immorality stemmed from making users into criminals.

In a Newsweek article Friedman wrote in 1972, he took a step outside his realm of monetary policy and free marketeering and laid out in clear, unequivocal terms what kind of social disaster we were buying with Nixon's drug war. Thirty years later, we know he couldn't have been more right.

Friedman's views emanated from libertarianism. He resented the government's interference in an adult's free will. But the economist in him also recognized the inexorable market forces that drove the illicit drug trade. He understood that as long as there was demand there would be supply, and by making drugs illegal, those enriched by the drug trade would be a violent, corrupting element of society.

In 1989, in a famous exchange he had on the pages of the Wall Street Journal with then-Drug Czar William Bennett, Friedman told Bennett that the prohibitionist's model was doomed to fail and would grind up freedom in the process.

"The path you propose of more police, more jails, use of the military in foreign countries, harsh penalties for drug users, and a whole panoply of repressive measures can only make a bad situation worse. The drug war cannot be won by those tactics without undermining the human liberty and individual freedom that you and I cherish."

Bennett apparently didn't see the hypocrisy in cherishing his freedom to gamble, while waging war against the rights of others to engage in their own personal vices. "The Book of Virtues" author who reportedly lost millions in Atlantic City and Las Vegas (Bennett must equate "moral" with technically legal), was a drug warrior of the first order, dismissing Friedman's legalization prescription as "irresponsible and reckless.

"We've followed the Nixon/Bennett drug-war model for 30 years and what we have to show for it was predictable from Day One.Those who have gotten rich on the illicit drug trade are drug lords and their cartels who use violence to control their enterprise. The money that flows from the illegal sales corrupts everything it touches from the cops on the beat to entire countries like Colombia. Drug use has not been curbed, yet our prisons have filled up with low-level dealers and users.

We have spent $1 trillion on the drug war since 1972 and we arrest 1.7 million people for nonviolent drug offenses every year. When you put a rapist in prison another one doesn't get recruited to take his place, but that is precisely what happens in drug dealing. Take one guy off the streets and that becomes a job opportunity for someone else in the neighborhood.

And despite this huge interdiction, enforcement and imprisonment apparatus that we have shoveled money into over the last 30 years, illicit drugs have become cheaper and more available.

Albert Einstein is credited with saying that insanity is "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result."

We must really be nuts.

Friedman wasn't the only brilliant economist to make the case for drug legalization. Nobel laureate Gary Becker wrote a column in Business Week in 2001 titled "It's Time to Give Up the War on Drugs."

Then, in 2005, Dr. Jeffrey Miron, a visiting professor at Harvard, published a report which called for replacing marijuana prohibition with a taxation and regulation scheme. It was endorsed by more than 500 distinguished economists.

Miron found that government could save between $10 billion and $14 billion annually if marijuana were legalized and taxed. As the Marijuana Policy Project noted, that would be enough to secure the former Soviet Union's "loose nukes" within three years. If safety and security is the goal, where would a yearly sum of $10 billion be better spent?

Since his death, Friedman has been lovingly eulogized by the nation's premier conservative voices, but few have lauded his bold and visionary understanding of the drug war. Legalization of drugs is Friedman's best economic and moral thesis that has been left untried; and one day, when courage returns to politics and we take this sensible step, experience will bear that out.

Copyright 2006 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.

http://www.startribune.com/562/story/833027.html