Self-Harming Crimes

The MHS political forum had an interesting discussion about rights and how the government should deal with various "victimless" crimes. Technical difficulties prevented the entire discussion from being filmed (my phones low memory), but this is proof it happened.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XfoNtywkXM&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJVYciMRS7g&feature=youtu.be

What political ideology/party do you identify with?

Republican - 17.7%

Democrat - 42.2%

Libertarian - 9.2%

Socialist - 5.3%

None - 25.5%

Do you believe that the government currently is too involved, or not involved enough in the lives of private individuals?

Too much - 52.6%

Not enough - 15.4%

Just enough - 32.1%

Do you think that victimless crimes in general should be legalized?

No - 45.6%

Yes - 29.2%

Individual states should decide - 25.2%

Was alcohol prohibition in the early 20th century as a whole a good policy?

No - 87.9%

Yes - 12.1%

Should legal drugs like alcohol, caffeine, tobbaco, etc. become illegal?

No - 69.8%

Yes - 12.1%

Individual states should decide - 18.1%

Should marijuana and other illegal drugs be legalized?

No - 16.0%

Just marijuana - 41.9%

Yes - 20.1%

Individual states should decide - 22.0%

Should gay marriage be legal?

No - 9.2%

Yes - 79.9%

Individual states should decide - 10.9%

Should prostitution be legal?

No - 29.6%

Yes - 42.8%

Individual states should decide - 27.6%

Should suicide be legal?

No - 18.2%

Yes - 33.9%

Only when an individual is terminally ill and suffering, and under the supervision of a doctor - 37.4%

Individual states should decide whether they want it to be legal or illegal - 10.5%

Most legal and ethical traditions establish individual freedoms. Violations of freedom hurt happiness and utility, which utilitarians would dislike. Violating freedom is a non-universalizable moral maxim, which Kantians would dislike. Legal scholars can point to nearly any constitution as guaranteeing certain freedoms and rights. And, it's simply intuitive to think there exists some sort of freedom, the right to make ones own choices. It seems we should be able to decide what we wish to do, to purchase, to pursue. But, with freedom comes the tricky dilemma of how different people's rights and freedoms overlap and conflict. Some of these issues becoem very apparent in the issue of victimless crimes. For example:

Should the government violate freedom in order to protect other peoples freedom?

Can the government violate a person's freedom in order to protect his own freedom?

Advocates of prohibition would argue that the government should illegalize drugs/prostitution/[insert other 'harmful' behavior] because that activity hurts the general public, and that users are only harming themselves. Which would seem to answer yes to the above two problems. But, this is problematic on several fronts.

The first question is oftentimes asked in such a way that intuitively, it would seem that the answer is yes. After all, murder and theft are illegal because doing so would limit the freedom of murderers and thieves while increasing the freedom of others. However, the problem with this view is that it neglects to address the issue of ownership. Freedom only makes sense when contextualized to individuals who have certain things that they have freedom over. So, the goal is not maximization of total amount of freedom, the goal is respecting freedom in and of itself. Which means that murder and theft are illegal because those acts do not respect freedom. This aim of respect for freedom rather than maximization is for many reasons, I'll skim the surface. Firstly, freedom is pointless if it can be conditionally violated - that's literally not freedom then. Secondly is that it's impossible to make predictions about our actions and whether or not they'll lead to more or less freedom in the future. For example, if action A leads to B, which increased freedom, then you'd think that A is good. However, if B lead to C, which decreased freedom, then A would suddenly become bad. And so on. Trying to maximize freedom for all people is pointless because the consequences of our actions continue throughout time and are unpredictable and never ending (Note that this does not mean you can do whatever you want on the basis of your own freedom. For example, we can still freely agree to contracts like the government that bind us to taxes/etc.). Thus, even if drug use can causally lead to some other negative consequences that may violate freedom later on, we shouldn't condemn the act of drug use itself.

The second question faces similar issues. Even if drug usage can have negative consequences and perhaps decrease an individuals freedoms, it's contradictory to violate a persons freedom in its own interest, and also leads to questions of consequential analysis that is impossible. It also leads to various unintuitive conclusions about the governments role in individual life. If the government can or should force people to do things that it would percieve as making them "more free." For example, can the government now ban overeating because obesity can cause premature death, thereby limiting freedom? Can the government now limit the amount of time you spend watching T.V. to protect your freedom to use your eyesight? If drugs are to be limited because they're bad for you, a whole lot of other practices should follow suit.

Please leave comments with your own thoughts below. 

Without even delving into dense ethical issues about individual freedom and the governments role, I think it's very defensible that status quo crimes like drug usage or prostitution should be legalized. This is due to a multitide of factors, including the ineffectiveness of prohibition and the inability to regulate criminal behavior.

For the sake of this discussion, I'll focus more on drugs because 1) they're probably the most controversial/commonly discussed "victimless crime" 2) they capture the issues involved with other 'crimes'

Firstly, deaths from drug use in the status quo are only 20% of the time caused by the actual drug (1). 80% of the time, it is "black market factors" that caused the death, factors which legalization would remove. Punishing drug use leads to unregulated and unsafe use in reclusive locations. For example, heroin needles cannot be regulated because heroin is illegal, and thus cause many deaths from the spreading of AIDS. Drs. Lester Grinspoon and James Bakalar write that "the most humane and sensible way to deal with [drugs] is to create a social situation in which they can be used in a controlled fashion and with moderation." This is also definitely true of prostitution - when it's illegal, there are no laws that can regulate how prostitutes are treated. If it's legal, safe prostitution can take place and abuse can be avoided.

Secondly, legalizing drugs will not lead to the masses all becoming addicted (2). We need only to look at the status of legal drugs like tobacco and alcohol, which in fact are being used less and less over time.

Thirdly, due to drug switching, even if there's increase in the amount of drug users, legalization of drugs would save lives. This is because many legal drugs like tobacco and alcohol actually cause more deaths per user than do illegal drugs like cocaine (1). So, if tobacco users would switch to less lethal newly legal drugs, we'd probably see a decrease in the amount of drug use.

Fourthly, even if drug use does increase a little, legal drug use will not hurt the economy by making people lazy. James Ostrowski writes that drug use only costs the economy 5 billion dollars a year, but because the economic cost of prohibition is 80 billion a year, the only way legalization could hurt the economy is if drug use increased 15 times upon legalization. In fact, because such an increase is unlikely, 

Please leave your thoughts/objections/contributions in the comments below!

1: James Ostrowski. Cato Institute Policy Analysis No. 121: Thinking about Drug Legalization. CATO. Policy Analysis. May 25, 1989. http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa121.pdf.

2: Mark Kleiman. Surgical Strikes in the Drug Wars. Foreign Affairs, Vol 90 No. 5. September/October 2011. http://www.seguridadcondemocracia.org/administrador_de_carpetas/OCO-IM/pdf/Kleiman-SurgicalStrikesDrugWarsFA.pdf]

This is my action research project website and will be focused on "victimless' crimes like drug use, prostitution, etc. and whether or not they should be legal. Please contribute in the comments and try to be civil.