Writing about the late Milton Friedman in The Independent, Johann Hari says:
"I will miss Milton Friedman. Not because I agree with his vision of small-state conservatisim - I don't - but because the late economist was the world's most eloquent critic of 'the war on drugs'. Friedman grew up amid the lawlessness of Prohibition America and recognised years ago that the criminalisation of narcotics would creat a thousand Al Capones. Late in his life, he calculated that 10,000 people die EACH YEAR in the US alone as result of drug turf wars - mostly bystanders caught in the crossfire.
He not only showed how criminalisation inflates prices (heroin costs 3,000% more than it would in a legal market) but also how prohibition gives drug sellers a commercial incentive to produce stronger, more dangerous, variants. "During alcohol prohibition, moonshine eclipsed beer; during drug prohibition, crack is eclipsing cocaine." The answer, Friedman realised, was to legalise drugs. Addiction will always be a problem, but 'adding a vast layer of criminality, making drugs more toxic, and squandering £20 BILLION on enforcing prohibition that could be better spent on prescription, prevention and rehab, has failed, utterly.'
Interesting, I thought. I've long thought that Class A and B drugs should be decriminalised, even though I know of lives damaged (and not the addicts' so much as their children, parents, and friends who they've stolen from or beaten up to obtain money for their addictions) by these over-priced and frequently badly-manufactured objects of desire. If the stats are to be trusted, they're ridiculous - imagine the police/lawyers/courts' time absorbed in this tosh, let alone paramedics, A&E wards, doctors, Social Svcs., etc. attending to the fall-out from the cases.
How long before the so-called war on drug prohibition, like the misjudged war on alcohol addiction, is kicked into touch?
"I will miss Milton Friedman. Not because I agree with his vision of small-state conservatisim - I don't - but because the late economist was the world's most eloquent critic of 'the war on drugs'. Friedman grew up amid the lawlessness of Prohibition America and recognised years ago that the criminalisation of narcotics would creat a thousand Al Capones. Late in his life, he calculated that 10,000 people die EACH YEAR in the US alone as result of drug turf wars - mostly bystanders caught in the crossfire.
He not only showed how criminalisation inflates prices (heroin costs 3,000% more than it would in a legal market) but also how prohibition gives drug sellers a commercial incentive to produce stronger, more dangerous, variants. "During alcohol prohibition, moonshine eclipsed beer; during drug prohibition, crack is eclipsing cocaine." The answer, Friedman realised, was to legalise drugs. Addiction will always be a problem, but 'adding a vast layer of criminality, making drugs more toxic, and squandering £20 BILLION on enforcing prohibition that could be better spent on prescription, prevention and rehab, has failed, utterly.'
Interesting, I thought. I've long thought that Class A and B drugs should be decriminalised, even though I know of lives damaged (and not the addicts' so much as their children, parents, and friends who they've stolen from or beaten up to obtain money for their addictions) by these over-priced and frequently badly-manufactured objects of desire. If the stats are to be trusted, they're ridiculous - imagine the police/lawyers/courts' time absorbed in this tosh, let alone paramedics, A&E wards, doctors, Social Svcs., etc. attending to the fall-out from the cases.
How long before the so-called war on drug prohibition, like the misjudged war on alcohol addiction, is kicked into touch?