I raise the point as someone who is quite happy to support marijuana and alcohol use, but believe the definition of victimless is not an easy one.
> If there was a statistical link between a drug and increasing the chance of the user committing violence would you still consider drugs victimless
Yes I would. Consuming drugs never creates a victim, that is an indisputable fact, you cannot victimize yourself. If you commit violence against another person, that's already illegal and already punishable and is a crime regardless of why you did it.
Drug use is not drug abuse and we don't need pre-crime in our world. Punish people who actually do the bad things, not those who might do something bad, otherwise we should start locking up all poor people because they might statistically commit more crimes than the rich. This is a dangerous line of thinking.
Say I walk down the street firing a gun randomly, but I don't strike anyone with a bullet. Civil remedies only?
If by firing randomly you were assured nobody else would be hurt, would anyone still care? The real problem with firing randomly is that you can't ensure nobody will get hurt.
Taking drugs is two steps removed from that. The idea being that by taking drugs, you are more likely to walk down the street firing a gun randomly, therefore a criminal. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.
Why not? If you are in actual fact endangering people then you are risking the severe criminal penalties that would be imposed if you hit someone. That is enough to deter anyone acting rationally. On the other hand, if you are not deterred because you have somehow ensured that your actions will cause no damage, why should your actions be prohibited?
That is a poor assumption. The government is incompetent (and corrupt) to choose what course of action best manages risk.
The better answer is to make people (and their insurance carriers) liable for the damage they actually cause. If you drive too fast and kill someone, you should be liable for a Very Large sum of money. If you drive 90MPH and cause no damage, you should be left to your devices. If driving fast has a high correlation to causing damage then insurance companies will figure out a way to charge higher premiums to people who take more risks (with risks defined scientifically by statisticians rather than corruptly by politicians), and the higher premiums will either deter the risky behavior to the extent that the damage caused by the risk is in excess of the value of getting there faster to the driver, or alternatively cause the driver to pay money in the amount necessary to compensate for the risk being imposed on others.
There is no need for criminal penalties, which do nothing but create animosity between the police and the population, encourage lawbreaking, encourage the police to issue unwarranted citations (and set inappropriate speed limits or unsafely short yellow lights) in order to generate revenue, etc.
The same applies to illicit drug use. If there are negative externalities then require purchasers to carry insurance, or impose a tax, and use the money to mitigate or compensate for the damage actually caused.
You can't actually give someone your life. Killing the perpetrator doesn't bring back the victim, it's just revenge. And revenge is never justice.
What benefits the victim more? Setting the perpetrator on fire, or making the perpetrator [carry insurance sufficient to] pay the victim the most accurate estimate we can make of the monetary value of the damage caused? I know people hate assigning dollar figures to human life, but in the absence of some technology capable of resurrecting the deceased, how else do you propose to compensate the victim's loved ones?
Then there is the key point that jail costs time which is proportional to the individual fined rather than the victim. In a proportional payment system there would be an even larger perverse incentive to get hit by moneyed people if the fine was in anyway punitive.
"But it costs society to incarcerate and is a net negative from the point after the accident on", Yes but we decided that prisoners shouldn't incur debt for being imprisoned for some very good reasons.
What of the victims? What benefits the victims more than giving them money after the fact is reducing the risk of it happening in the first place. A payment system has either a more harsh proportional punishment than the current system to decrease this happening further, or reckless driving will increase because it is more tenable for the drivers (or people are irrational when assessing jail time and money as punishment and the deterrent affect is not proportional).
So my main point is while I agree that it may be utilitarian to lower the cost to society after the fact there can be even more utility to play the ultimatum game before the event.