DRUG WAR LOWS: MILTON FRIEDMAN'S 30-YEAR-OLD ADVICE

The great economist and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman turns 90 on July 31.
President Bush, who invited him to the White House for a public toast and a
private lunch to celebrate the occasion a few weeks ago, had some very nice
things to say about him, for good reason.

Friedman, the president said, "has used a brilliant mind to advance a moral
vision: the vision of a society where men and women are free, free to
choose, but where government is not as free to override their decisions.
... (He) has shown us that when government attempts to substitute its own
judgments for the judgments of free people, the results are usually
disastrous."

The president did not mention the best example of such a disaster: The
so-called war on drugs, which Bush very much supports and Friedman has been
opposing since the day it was declared by President Nixon in 1972.

Writing in Newsweek in May 1972, Friedman took on "Prohibition and Drugs"
in these terms: "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."

It is a view consistent with the notion of individual freedom as being
guided by one's own judgment rather than government's: Individuals will do
unto themselves what they will, correcting their mistakes the same way that
the "invisible hand" of the free market corrects its own. It so happens
that Friedman believes that invisible hand to be infallible a considerable
flaw in Friedman's concept of freedom, especially when it is applied to
individual choice. Anything human is fallible, free markets included.

But it is still better to fail by one's own hand (to be a drug addict, for
example) than to be a victim of government's failure as it attempts to
judge the good and bad of individual behavior (by putting drug addicts in
prison). Just as government should temper the excesses of the free market
by regulating it lightly, it should balance personal freedoms with the
values and interests of society at large, which ideally complement rather
than contradict those freedoms.

The drug war has been a complete failure along those lines, punishing
individuals, wrecking individual rights, turning Americans against
Americans and inner cities into war zones, jamming prisons to levels
unparalleled anywhere in the world, corrupting police agencies, costing
more to fight (in 2002, anyway) than the $1 billion-a-month Afghan war, and
to date yielding not even a hope for victory. An end in itself, it is a
perpetual war written into the nation's budget, its social fabric and its
election cycles.

Friedman declared the war indefensible on moral grounds. President Bush,
citing many free market successes tailored after the economist's ideas
around the world, including China and Russia, noted how "the rest of the
world is finally catching up with Milton Friedman." But Friedman's economic
disciples at home have yet to catch up to him regarding one of the most
damaging campaigns against Americans and individual rights in the nation's
history.