Victimless Crimes

Yesterday, while I was finishing going pee in the bathroom, I realized something. The argument that a certain crime is victimless begs the question. Allow me to elaborate.

Let's take druge laws. A lot of time, people argue that with drug laws, when people break them, it is a victimless crime. It is a crime where there is no victim. No one is being wronged in the situation. Since no one is being wronged, there should be no law against it.

However, why not consider the person who is taking drugs to be a victim? Perhaps he is a victim of the big tobacco companies who just want him to get hooked because they want to be rich. Perhaps he is a victim of an alcohol company who wants the same.

But not only that, to say a crime is victimless is equivalent to saying that the crime is not wrong. There is only a "victim" in a certain situation when a wrong act was committed. So, starting from the statement "This crime is victimless" is just simply equivalent to saying, "This crime is not wrong." Therefore,one cannot use the claim, "This crime is victimless" to prove "This crime is not wrong." If someone already believes the crime to be wrong, they will not think it is victimless. Minimally, in the drug-taking situation, one could argue that the drug user is wronging himself. He could further argue that big companies are wronging him as well.

So, the argument that "X is a victimless crime" to prove that "This crime is not wrong" does not work.

(One could prove that there is no victim by saying that the person taking the drugs is harming himself but not wronging himself. I see this as a very impossible argument to make. If one did make that argument, however, they would not be begging the question.)