Viewpoints
Opinion

​Taking Illegal Drugs Is Often Not a ‘Victimless Crime’

Freedom isn’t absolute. The right to put whatever you like into your body doesn’t entitle you to engage in antisocial activities that impose costs on others.
​Taking Illegal Drugs Is Often Not a ‘Victimless Crime’
A sign prohibiting drug use and camping sits off a sidewalk in Los Angeles on Jan. 27, 2023. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times
Mark Hendrickson
Mark Hendrickson
contributor
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Commentary

I agree with my libertarian friends that government repeatedly, even habitually, makes a mess of things through its economic (actually, antieconomic) interventions into various marketplaces. When it comes to illegal drugs, however, the doctrinaire libertarian argument that drug use is a “victimless crime” is simply wrong.

Mark Hendrickson
Mark Hendrickson
contributor
Mark Hendrickson is an economist who retired from the faculty of Grove City College in Pennsylvania, where he remains fellow for economic and social policy at the Institute for Faith and Freedom. He is the author of several books on topics as varied as American economic history, anonymous characters in the Bible, the wealth inequality issue, and climate change, among others.
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