quote · Legacy record
Now here's somebody who wants to smoke a marijuana cigarette. If he's caught, he goes to jail. Now is that moral? Is that proper? I think it's absolutely disgraceful that our government, supposed to be 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. That's the issue to me. The economic issue comes in only for explaining why it has those effects. But the economic reasons are not the reasons
Now here's somebody who wants to smoke a marijuana cigarette. If he's caught, he goes to jail. Now is that moral? Is that proper? I think it's absolutely disgraceful that our government, supposed to be 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. That's the issue to me. The economic issue comes in only for explaining why it has those effects. But the economic reasons are not the reasons
Approximate author period: c. 1959 AD · modern
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- Author or tradition
- Milton Friedman
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
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- Approximate author period: c. 1959 AD · modern
Approximate author-period evidence for Milton Friedman: life dates 1912 to 2006. Wikidata Q47426, inspected 2026-10-08. Not a quotation composition date or independent verification of attribution. Source: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q47426 (accessed 2026-10-08).
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Supplied reference C; CSV row 246229; supplied attribution, independently unverified
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