On the evening of January 29, a documentary on the late economist Milton Friedman, The Power of Choice: The Life and Ideas of Milton Friedman, will make its debut on PBS stations across America.

Although the documentary does not detail Friedman’s views on drug policy, the Nobel Prize-winning economist was a longstanding supporter of Drug Policy Alliance and openly criticized America's drug war in venues like Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal. 

In 1992, The Drug Policy Foundation – one of Drug Policy Alliance’s predecessor organizations – published interviews with Friedman and excerpts from his works in the book On Liberty and Drugs: Essays on the Free Market and Prohibition.

Upon Friedman’s death at age 94 last November, executive director Ethan Nadelmann praised him for his spirited role as a longstanding drug war dissident on The Huffington Post:  “Friedman didn’t view America’s drug war as an economic problem. For him, the drug war remained primarily an immoral government endeavor….  As he once told a reporter, ‘I think it absolutely disgraceful that our government [should] be in the position of converting people who are not harming others into criminals, of destroying their lives, putting them in jail.’”

Nikos Leverenz, director of the California Capital Office, points to Milton Friedman as a seminal intellectual influence:  “I doubt that I would be dedicated to fighting America’s pernicious drug war were it not for the sage words of Milton Friedman.  As with other classical liberal intellectuals, he looked to the improvement of the human condition as a lodestar.  Freedom is not simply an abstract ideal:  it is a tangible means to ameliorate those hardships resulting from both living in a world with scarce material resources and those coercive government activities that often serve to exacerbate such hardships.”

Drug Policy Alliance is delighted to join those who are celebrating the life and work of one of America’s foremost public intellectuals.  We shall continue to work toward the vision shared by Friedman and all those who are dedicated to ending the current drug war, particularly by advancing those policies and attitudes that best reduce the harms of both drug misuse and drug prohibition.

More Information:

Official "Milton Friedman Day" Website

Milton Friedman on the Drug War (Shaffer Library on Drug Policy)

Autobiographical Entry on Nobel Foundation Website

2006 Podcast Interview on Capitalism and Freedom