Self-Harming Crimes

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]