ABSTRACT: Milton Friedman, Nobel Prizewinner for Economics, explains the reasons for abolishing the prohibition of narcotics. We are publishing a passage about the war against crime from the book he wrote with his wife Rose, "The Tyranny of the Status Quo".

("Single issue" booklet for the XXXV Congress of The Radical Party - Budapest 22-26 april 1989)

Most offences are not committed by people hungry for food, but by people hungry for drugs. Prohibitionism should have taught us something. When prohibition came into force in 1920, Billy Sunday, the famous Evangelical preacher and head of the crusade against the "Demon Rum", celebrated the event with these words: "The reign of tears is over. The slums will only be a memory. We will transform our prisons into factories, and our cells into storerooms and granaries. Men will walk with their heads held high, now women will smile and children laugh. Hell will remain vanquished for ever". Today we know how tragically mistaken this was. New prisons and new cells had to be built to house the increasing number of criminals because of the transformation of the consumption of alcoholic beverages into a crime against the State. Prohibitionism threatened respect for the law, corrupted its authors, created a moral climate of decadence and definitively did not prevent the consumption of alcohol. It is certainly

correct and important to try to reason with the potential slave of one of these substances, show him the consequences, pray with him and for him. But have we the right to use force directly or indirectly to prevent an adult man from drinking, smoking, or taking drugs? Our reply is negative. But we immediately allow that the ethical question is complex and that men of good will often disagree about it.

Luckily, it is clear that the answer to the ethical question is not necessary to take a position as regards the politics, if the reply looks for the State's capacity for action against the use of these substances. Prohibition - of drinking, smoking or taking narcotics - is an attempt to cure, that in our opinion, makes things worse both for those who are slaves of these and for the others. Therefore, even those who feel that prohibition by the State of the use of narcotics is ethically justifiable, ought to admit that the adoption of such measures is inadvisable for considerations of opportunity.

The legalisation of drugs would simultaneously reduce the number of crimes and improve respect for the law. It is hard to imagine any other single prevision which could make a more significant contribution to the promotion of law and order.