Drug czar: Milton Friedman's drug-war critique 'demonstrably untrue'

I've looked forward to interviewing the U.S. drug czar for years, and Tuesday afternoon I finally got the chance when current czar John Walters visited with the U-T editorial board. I'm happy to note that he took my libertarian griping seriously; many drug warriors seem amazed that anyone could suggest that the drug war is futile, costly, counterproductive and hypocritical, and often amounts to an assault on civil liberties.

I said to Walters that by any possible statistical reckoning of deaths, car wrecks, suicides, drownings, crimes of violence, etc., alcohol is vastly more destructive in the U.S. than all illegal drugs combined. I asked if he disputed this.

He didn't answer me directly even after I reposed the question. Basically, he said that while alcohol may be a big and destructive problem, the fact that alcohol is legal doesn't mean you don't try to reduce the use of other, illegal drugs. He said "the danger of marijuana today" is far greater than in the old days, thanks to its potency.

Did he in any way acknowledge the oddity of having a war on drugs that don't kill all that many people while tolerating drugs (alcohol, tobacco) which fill up graveyards 24-7?

I said that many libertarians object to the drug war not just on the grounds that government shouldn't tell people what they can put in their bodies but on the grounds that the execution of the drug war routinely involves assaults on civil liberties. I cited past drug czars' eager touting of confiscation policies, in which a family could lose its only car without even a court hearing if one member were caught driving the car while in possession of pot. Did he see the drug war as diminishing civil liberties?

Walters offered a broad defense of asset-forfeiture tactics as being "designed to reduce the demand in a tangible way. ... I'm not going to say" that "laws sometimes aren't misapplied," but claims that civil liberties are a routine victim of the drug war are "great misrepresentations" and a "great mischaracterization."

He said the "magnitude of the injustice" suffered in some cases was exaggerated.

I wanted to get to other questions before our time ran out, so I didn't ask him the obvious follow-up about the fact that no one is actually ever charged with a crime in many asset forfeiture cases, and that there is plenty of evidence that giving police agencies a motive to seize property (they can sell it later and add to their budgets) is a horrible idea.

Then I got into Milton Friedman's critique of the drug war, noting the evidence that the drug war -- by making popular intoxicants illegal and only available via a highly lucrative black market -- was responsible for lots of crimes beyond buying and selling, and that it had led to police corruption, among many other unintended consequences. I asked what he would do to combat drugs if could start over from scratch.

He said "the problem is not that we make drugs a crime; it is that drugs are catalysts to crime." And he said what "the facts really say" is that Milton Friendman's criticisms of the drug war were "untrue -- demonstrably untrue."

Here's what Friedman had to say in Newsweek in 1972 as the drug war was first gearing up:

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?

But, you may say, must we accept defeat? Why not simply end the drug traffic? That is where experience under Prohibition is most relevant. We cannot end the drug traffic. We may be able to cut off opium from Turkey but there are innumerable other places where the opium poppy grows. With French cooperation, we may be able to make Marseilles an unhealthy place to manufacture heroin but there are innumerable other places where the simple manufacturing operations involved can be carried out. 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.

Still looks "literally hopeless" to me. Walters offered stats showing declining use of certain illegal drugs, but so have past drug czars -- and guess what? New drug crazes emerged like clockwork (meth, oxycontin, etc.). Has the basic human interest in altered consciousness ever waned? Of course not.

Very few words in that column would have to be changed for it to be publishable today. The problem then was primarily heroin and the chief source of the heroin was Marseilles. Today, the problem is cocaine from Latin America. Aside from that, nothing would have to be changed.

Here it is almost twenty years later. What were then predictions are now observable results. As I predicted in that column, on the basis primarily of our experience with Prohibition, drug prohibition has not reduced the number of addicts appreciably if at all and has promoted crime and corruption.

Here's what Friedman wrote in 1991 about the vast toll the drug war took on the poor, especially minorities:

We can stop destroying the possibility of a decent family life among the underprivileged in this country. I do not agree with many people who would agree with me on that point about the role that government ought to play in the treatment of addiction. I do not agree either with those who say that the tragedy of the slums is really a social problem, that the underprivileged do not have enough jobs and therefore government has to provide them with jobs. I want to tell those people that government performance is no better in creating jobs and solving other social problems than it is in drug prohibition.

It is 2007, and nearly 30 percent of young African-American males in many cities are in jail, on probation or on parole, and the drug war is the main reason. It is 2007, and it is still common to hear black youths and young adults describe an urban lifestyle so barren that pro sports and drug dealing are the only way out. Is Milton Friedman "demonstrably untrue" in warning of the drug war's collateral damage in ghettos? Of course not.

Here's what Friedman wrote in 1988 about a huge problem with the drug war that's rarely mentioned:

Legalizing drugs would reduce enormously the number of victims of drug use who are not addicts: people who are mugged, people who are corrupted, the reduction of law and order because of the corruption of law enforcement, and the allocation of a very large fraction of law enforcement resources to this one particular activity.

Is he wrong again? Hardly. Especially after 9/11, our eagerness to spend billions a week to wage an unwinnable war on drugs is simultaneously wasteful, irrational and dangerous.

Walters didn't say what he would do to reduce destructive drug use if he could start from scratch. He seems to believe in the status quo.

No, that wasn't just the sort of thing Walters said Tuesday. That was President George H.W. Bush talking in 1990 on the first anniversary of his appointment of the first drug czar, Bill Bennett. Similar claims came out of the Clinton administration in 1997 after stepped-up cooperation with Mexico. Now we're hearing the same from this Bush administration.

This isn't even Orwellian; it's too simple-minded. We are making progress in the drug war, the government tells us, now and always.

Shouldn't perpetual progress at some point add up to something substantial and significant? Shouldn't perpetual progress mean at some point, a la the "defense dividend" after the end of the Cold War, that we can spend less on the drug war?

Why, of course not. Such questions aren't helpful. What's important, after all, is that we are making progress in the drug war. Just look at our charts and graphs.

The mind reels. The only thing "demonstrably untrue" about Milton Friedman's drug-war critique is the idea that it has been discredited.

There is zero, nada, no evidence that any drug makes anyone do any type crime. Criminals cause crime. People who are criminals are anti social. What, do guns cause crime? Does the color of your skin cause crime? Wow. Where do you get the skin color and guns comments. Don't try to place words where they didn't exist. (You work for Media Matters?) There is every bit of evidence that drug addicts commit crimes to support their habbits. You are clueless if you think they where all always anti social criminals. You really have no clue whatsoever on who becomes addicts and why. You have no clue on what they will do to support their addiction. You really do not understand addiction at all.

He is wrong.
Robberies are caused by robbers, murderers by murderers and so forth.

These murderers are murderers who may or may not do drugs. The drugs are cheap. With todays present business taxes, rules and regulations all of which would be passed on to drug prices vs black-market under the table drugs, I am not sure that the prices could be any lower. I actually believe that like AmWay people, if a true accounting was done of time and overhead of drug dealers, they are selling at a loss. Anyways, People murder over pork chops(true story)

Like the liberals say, we have to get to ‘root causes’. It isn’t the illegal drugs, at all. There is no causation, no scientific support for taking any drug and doing any particular act. People do this for the old reason that they are greedy, lazy thieving murdering screws. That is where our attentions, money, labor, and courts should be. The WOD is a harmful distraction, at best. By the way, the money/cost of living/cost of drugs/poor people cause crime? 1945 NYCity murders for the year? 50. It is the person. Not the drug. A population of sleazy, lazy, welfare grown, public housing housed, middle and upper income psycho babble pukes are going to do things because umba-gumba drugs made them do it and there are a bunch of liberal/conservative witch doctors that believe it too and tell these scum that it is not them that did it but the drug. Conservative drug warriors are enablers for drug crime. They tell criminals that it was the drug that did it. Just like liberals tell criminals it is because daddy never gave you a hug.

"A rational person would know that rational people disagree often and that on any subject people would disagree"

Correct. If drugs were legal, rational people would disagree on exactly how much their use would increase. An irrational person would say drug use would decrease.

Are you saying it's rational to expect drug use to decrease if legalized?

"I feel it can only be said that we don't know the true numbers one way or the other."

Correct. How could we possiby know? So, what does reason tell you what would happen? Isn't it reasonable to say that drug use would increase?

Since reason is the basis for rational thought, and it is reasonable to expect drug use to increase, it is therefore rational thought. Thinking any different is irrational.

A rational person would look at the drugs and rank them based on the harm they are known to cause or likely to cause.

Based on that we would place alcohol and tobacco near the top, known to be very harmful, and marijuana near the bottom, nearly harmless, with other drugs treated similarly.

But that would not fit the Drug War Template.

Even in Federal prisons, drugs are affordable. So your argument about price and availability is false, untrue, unfactual.

Indeed. It's hard to believe anyone can support the police state that a drug war requires when they can't even keep drugs out of federal prisons!

Some people worship the state because it allows them to simply disengage their brains.

"Pot wasn't illegal during the depression"

Why are you focusing on pot? The author was discussing recreational drug in general, not pot specfically.

Second, opiates were illegal, but I don't recall reading that pro sports and opiate drug dealing were the only way out.

Third, the Great Depression spanned the years 1929 to 1941. The Marihuana Tax Act was passed in 1937. It wasn't illegal, but it might just as well have been.

We could legalize drunk driving. Arrest the drunk driver only if he harms someone or damages property.

I know you were being sarcastic, but I would be inclined to agree with that position. If they do cause harm, be it to people or property, they will be punished, if a blood test shows that the driver was intoxicated, then the judge may use his or her discretion to impose a harsher sentence.

You really believe what you just wrote? That making drugs legal will magically end crime from drugs.

Yes, as do many others here who can see with their own eyes, that people are not being killed in the street over alcohol like they were during prohibition I.

Some of us apparently learned something from history. Others never seem to.

"Just because you don't know where to look"

So the average American does? I don't think so.

You'll have a very difficult time convincing me that drugs are "readily available" when the average American doesn't have a clue on where to even begin looking for them.

"It just means you don't know where to look."

Ooooh. Do I detect a slight tinge of condescention in that post? Well excuse me. But I don't consider it to be a sign of social ignorance to not know where to obtain cheap and pure heroin.

If the government gets out of drugs, yes, I believe numbers will come down.

I put that everyone that wants drugs now, does them. I do not believe any drug number, private or public, now or in the future, so we don’t know and will not know other than an exercise in rhetoric.

However, in your experience which is more effective for solutions, government or private?

Which are better schools?
Which are better hospitals?
Which are better housing?
And so forth.
Why do you think that government which is bad, poorer at schools, hospitals, housing will be better than private efforts?

We know when the government enters a arena, like charity, it displace private effort. So, since I put that private efforts in all things are more effective, then I must argue that the government get out of the way with suppression of drug usage.

Government WOD makes drugs usage higher. The war should be fought on an individual basis. So long as the government relives individuals, families, employers from this hard nasty work, people will not do the work themselves. This is welfare 101.

You supporting the WOD is no different that supporting public housing projects. You and those like you are making problems worse and getting between the parties that need to hash this social problem out.

You are part of the problem.

In other words, government makes drug usage worse. I believe this to be true, by reason and observation.

"Boats, cars, houses, cash. No trial. No criminal prosecution. You have to sue in order to get them back, and that rarely works."

Not the federal government. Not today. I have no idea what you're talking about.

Maybe some state has asset forfeiture laws like this. But that's up to the citizens of each state. That's their business. Not mine. Not yours.

You made the statement. Perhaps you can clarify who has these laws.

You'll have a very difficult time convincing me that drugs are "readily available" when the average American doesn't have a clue on where to even begin looking for them.

Do you think you're representative of the "average American?"

Ooooh. Do I detect a slight tinge of condescention in that post?

Absolutely not; I'm just telling you how it is. Lest you forget, I'm one of the few drug addicts on these WoD threads who doesn't think you're a complete flake.

"you might do well to learn how they actually work."

I do do well. I read CAFRA 2000.

Now, if you would have taken the time to read it (instead of using that time to criticize me for not reading it) you would have found that your statement, "The burden of proof is often placed upon those whose property has been seized to demonstrate that it ought to be returned" is incorrect. The burden is on the federal government.

"It is a perversion of the justice system."

Civil asset forfeiture has been around since biblical times, was part of English law (upon which our laws are based) and was implemented in this country long before our War on Drugs.

"I'd rather have cops in suits, working murders than busting street wretches."

Who's going to deal with the gangs and international drug figures who set up shop in the U.S. to smuggle our cheap and legal recreational drugs to the rest of the world where their use remains illegal?

There are currently 15 million marijuana users -- 30% of them are underage. That figure could grow with legalization. Who's going to enforce the marijuana laws where nearly half the users are underage and illegal?

"Then it must not be a problem in low income neighborhoods."

According to the author, it IS a problem in low income neighborhoods -- users are dealing drugs, stealing, and prostituting in order to afford them.

"Glad to know that pot possession never leads to prison time."

Possessing 2 tons will get you there.

"Drug prohibition has itself led to the increased potency responsible for ODs."

So you're saying that if heroin is made legal, the federal government will limit potentcy? And that won't lead to a black market of high potentcy heroin? You really haven't thought this through, have you?

"Do the taxing and regulation of alcohol and tobacco infringe upon your Constitutional rights to the same effect that the drug war does?"

You're right. Whenever I think of the ATF I never think of Waco or Ruby Ridge. Those DEA guys, on the other hand, shoot dogs!

"If you think we would NOT be a freer society with a decrease in federal drug enforcement, you have no absolutely no critical thinking ability."

The thought that we would be the world's largest exporter of drugs obviously never occurred to you.

"Upon what are you basing your conclusion that the WOD is working?"

Simple. If we didn't have the WOD we'd have more people using drugs. The mere fact that we have less users means it's working.

Unless you think that if we got rid of the DEA, legalized drugs, opened our borders to drug imports, drugs became cheaper and purer, and drug use would decrease, then you'd have to agree.

Or, I could post graphs which show that drug use dropped 60% from its high point in 1979 and has remained relatively flat for the last 15 years.

You are starting to piss me off, a little bit, not much.

Anyways, how many times have I told you social numbers are junk? No one knows how many people use marijuana. At all. So how the heck do they know that 30 percent are kids? They don’t.
Those are junk numbers.
No government effort will stop kids from doing drugs. Period. Just like learning, getting a job, staying in school, it is only the parents that can do it. You should not be taking Hillary Clinton’s “It takes a village( nee, government)” argument here on Free Republic.

Again, private efforts are more effective than government. So long as the government attempts to badly be the daddy in the drug war, things will get worse, not better.

Grow up. Demand others grow up. Stop looking to government for solutions.

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