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.