Dear Reader,

Did you know that in countries like Malaysia and Brunei, religious authorities can raid private spaces to catch unmarried Muslim couples suspected of being alone together?

You literally have religious police storming into hotel rooms – no warrant required – in an attempt to catch them in the act.

Whatever your moral view of premarital sex, that kind of enforcement is obviously dystopian.

And it gets to the heart of a much bigger issue:

Crime should be about actions that violate OTHER people’s rights.

Theft… fraud… assault… murder… coercion.

These all violate the rights of others and should be punished by law.

But in the places I just mentioned, the state goes further.

It doesn’t just punish crimes – it tries to punish sin.

And once a society starts legislating sin, that’s when things get ugly. Because:

There is a Difference Between What People Should Not Do… And What They Should Not Be Allowed to Do

Many Christians believe sex should be reserved for marriage.

That’s fine. It’s a moral standard.

But trying to enforce that standard with police, jail, surveillance, raids, and criminal punishment would be insane.

The cure would be far worse than the disease.

The same principle applies to a lot of other things too.

Gambling is probably a bad idea for most people (the odds are always titled toward the house).

Alcohol has been scientifically proven to only have negative health outcomes.

And yet, we already know from experience that trying to stamp those things out with force creates its own uglier set of consequences.

During Prohibition, organized crime exploded, and America’s major cities became violent battlegrounds.

Look at how “drugs” are treated today.

Whenever the decriminalization/legalization debate arises, the first thing people ask is:

“Are drugs bad?”

But that’s not the question.

Of course many drugs are bad.

Of course addiction destroys lives.

Of course people should not be doing many of these things.

The real question we should be asking ourselves is:

Does Criminalizing Vice Actually Reduce Harm… Or Does It Just Create an Even Darker System Around It?

When you look honestly at the war on drugs, the answer is pretty clear.

It did nothing to eliminate the demand.

All it did was change who profits from it.

It changed the supplier – not the addiction.

And to see why, you have to stop thinking about drugs in simple black-and-white terms.

They’re not just “legal” or “illegal.”

They exist on a spectrum of regulation.

Some drugs have very little regulation around them. Some have a lot. Some are outright outlawed.

Take something like Tylenol or ibuprofen.

Those are drugs. They alter the state of your body to achieve an effect.

And despite being widely available, they are not harmless.

The FDA warns that acetaminophen is found in hundreds of products, and NIH says overdose from it is a major cause of acute liver failure in the U.S.

But because it is cheap, widely available, and lightly regulated, most people use it safely, the information is easy to access, and the market functions more or less normally.

Then move up a layer to alcohol, nicotine, and marijuana.

These have age limits, tax rules, shipping rules, and other barriers around access.

But those rules do not eliminate use.

Millions of underage Americans still binge drink, and about 1.63 million students used e-cigarettes in 2024.

Then move up another layer to heavily regulated prescription drugs.

The extra regulation does not eliminate abuse. It does not eliminate addiction.

Opioids are the clearest example – Vicodin, Percocet, morphine.

These are heavily regulated pharmaceutical products, and yet they still fueled addiction and mass death.

From 1999 to 2023, the CDC estimates nearly 308,000 people died from overdoses involving prescription opioids – with the number of annual deaths quadrupling from 1999 to 2023.

So what did the regulation do?

It helped create monopolies, protected margins, and massive profits for politically connected firms like Purdue Pharma, Johnson & Johnson, and Teva.

Then finally you get to the fully outlawed drugs – heroin, cocaine, fentanyl, ecstasy.

The same basic supply-and-demand mechanics still exist.

People still want the product.

Someone still supplies it. Someone still distributes it. Someone still profits from it.

The difference is that now, the money flows to the worst people on earth.

Cartels, black-market gangs, and violent criminal networks.

The more force you add to the system, the darker the supply chain becomes.

When you keep ratcheting up force, you do not eliminate vice, addiction, or self-destruction.

You just decide whether the money goes to Walgreens, Pfizer, or a criminal cartel.

We’ve already seen a smaller version of this with cannabis.

Research on U.S. medical marijuana laws in states bordering Mexico found roughly a 12% to 13% drop in violent crime, especially in counties closest to the border.

That is exactly what you would expect when one product gets pulled out of the black market and into a legal one.

In countries like Portugal, decriminalization was associated with reductions in drug-related deaths, problematic drug use, HIV and Hepatitis C rates, prison overcrowding, and overall social costs.

Sin and a Free Society

There is no world where bad things don’t happen.

There is no law that abolishes human weakness, self-destruction, or vice.

People are free moral agents.

Some will choose well. Some will choose badly. Some will ruin themselves.

That will be true whether the system is mostly free or highly coercive.

So the real issue is not whether the bad outcomes disappear – because they won’t.

The real issue is what additional consequences the state creates when it tries to suppress those bad choices with force.

This is why understanding the distinction between sin and crime is so important.

Premarital sex may be immoral in your moral framework.

Gambling may be destructive. Alcohol may wreck families. Drugs may destroy lives.

All of that is true.

But once you decide that every vice, every foolish choice, and every self-destructive behavior must be crushed by force…

…you create a society that is more invasive, more coercive, more violent, and more corrupt.

The law should punish violations of other people’s rights.

It should not become a giant machine for trying to erase every bad human choice.

Because it cannot do that.

All it can do is pile more damage on top of the damage that already exists.

A free society survives only if it remembers the difference between sin and crime.

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