Thursday, June 02, 2005

Milton Friedman Advocates MJ Legalization

Milton Friedman Advocates MJ Legalization

The week gets weirder: first Deep Throat outs himself, then Milton Friedman starts talking like Peter Tosh:

Milton Friedman leads a list of more than 500 economists from around the U.S. who today will publicly endorse a Harvard University economist's report on the costs of marijuana prohibition and the potential revenue gains from the U.S. government instead legalizing it and taxing its sale. Ending prohibition enforcement would save $7.7 billion in combined state and federal spending, the report says, while taxation would yield up to $6.2 billion a year.

"Our failure to successfully enforce these laws is responsible for the deaths of thousands of people in Colombia. I haven't even included the harm to young people. It's absolutely disgraceful to think of picking up a 22-year-old for smoking pot. More disgraceful is the denial of marijuana for medical purposes."


Don't often find myself in the company of the man who said "the social responsibility of business is to increase profits," but we can all grow a little.

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