https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/12/laurence-m-vance/do-victimless-crimes-have-victims/
"This is not to say that gambling, prostitution, pornography, and drugs are wholesome and harmless and not sinful and injurious. But should gambling be illegal because some gamblers have squandered their life savings? Should prostitution be illegal because some prostitutes have handlers who keep them high on drugs? Should pornography be illegal because it harms the minds and hearts of some people who look at it? Should drugs be illegal because someone might drive under the influence or neglect his family?
And here are some related questions. Should tobacco be illegal because it is addictive, unhealthy, and a waste of money? Should junk food be illegal because of its responsibility for the obesity epidemic? The most destructive thing in America today, that affects people from all walks of life, and harms people more than gambling, prostitution, pornography, and drugs combined, is alcohol. To be consistent, advocates of making gambling, prostitution, pornography, and drugs illegal should likewise be crusading for alcohol prohibition.
And if someone feels that although gambling, prostitution, pornography, drugs, tobacco, junk food, and alcohol are harmful, they should not be illegal, then we have no quarrel. I have always, in my many articles on these subjects, maintained that these things are or could be addictive, financial ruinous, stupid, destructive, dangerous, a waste of money, a bad habit, a vice, immoral, or sinful. It is just not the job of government to prevent or discourage anyone from partaking of any of them.
Gambling, prostitution, pornography, and drugs are vices, but they are not crimes. I cannot improve upon the words of the great 19th-century classical-liberal political philosopher Lysander Spooner:
Vices are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property. Crimes are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another. Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property.
Unless this clear distinction between vices and crimes be made and recognized by the laws, there can be on earth no such thing as individual right, liberty, or property — no such things as the right of one man to the control of his own person and property, and the corresponding and coequal rights of another man to the control of his own person and property.
Just because someone directly engaging in vice may indirectly affect someone else, does not mean that a victimless crime has a victim."
