How Vice Profits from the Erosion of Freedom
By Rev. Mark Creech
RevMarkCreech.org
America rightly congratulates itself on having abolished slavery. With the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, the nation declared that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude would exist within its borders. Chains were struck off. Ownership of human beings was repudiated.
Yet an unsettling question remains: can a society outlaw slavery in law while quietly tolerating, and even profiting from, new forms of bondage in practice?
Today’s chains are not iron. They are chemical, neurological, and psychological. They bind not the wrists, but the will.
The modern vice industries – alcohol, gambling, tobacco, and increasingly recreational marijuana – flourish by cultivating dependency. Their profitability depends not on moderation but on compulsion. A relatively small share of heavy and habitual users generates a disproportionate share of revenue, making addiction not an unfortunate side effect, but a structural necessity.
One group of people is permitted to enrich itself by systematically exploiting the weakness, despair, and impaired judgment of another. That arrangement may not meet the narrow constitutional definition of slavery, but it bears an uncomfortable resemblance to it.
The Thirteenth Amendment prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude, terms courts have interpreted to require external coercion: force, threat, or legal compulsion. Vice industries escape this prohibition because participation is described as voluntary, consensual, and uncoerced. No one is held down. No chains are applied. No one is force-fed. No threats are issued. Yet the absence of physical pressure is treated as proof that meaningful freedom remains.
Legally, that argument carries weight. Morally, it does not.
The law recognizes that consent obtained under duress is invalid. It recognizes that impaired judgment voids contracts. Yet when addiction predictably erodes a person’s capacity to choose, the law suddenly pretends freedom is still intact.
Indeed, the person “chose.” After that, choice is steadily hollowed out. What remains is not freedom, but dependency.
It is often answered that this erosion of choice does not occur in every case, and that freedom must therefore be preserved for those who believe they can partake responsibly. However, the law is never written to permit collateral damage. It is written in light of foreseeable harm. A system that predictably diminishes self-government in many cannot justify itself by appealing to those who remain unaffected – especially when its profitability depends on those who do not.
This dynamic is not accidental. It is the business model.
Casinos are engineered to prolong play and distort judgment. Tobacco long ago perfected the art of sustaining addiction through product design and marketing. Alcohol marketing normalizes excess while minimizing harm. The recreational marijuana industry increasingly follows the same trajectory, favoring higher-potency products and repeat consumption that secure long-term customers rather than occasional users.
These industries do not merely offer products; they cultivate demand by fostering dependency.
Moreover, the state, far from being a neutral regulator, has become a financial beneficiary through licensing, taxation, and, in some cases, promotion, moving beyond mere tolerance of these industries to active authorization. Tax revenues from alcohol, tobacco, gambling, and marijuana are now woven into public budgets. Entire public programs depend on money extracted from human weakness. The public treasury, like the addict, becomes reliant on the very thing that causes harm.
It is difficult to condemn exploitation when the government is sharing the proceeds.
The purpose of law has never been to eradicate every vice or guarantee perfect compliance. Laws against theft do not eliminate theft, and laws against violence do not eliminate crime. Yet no serious society concludes that such laws are therefore pointless.
The question is not whether restraint eliminates all wrongdoing, but whether it affirms moral boundaries and protects the vulnerable. A culture that refuses to restrain predatory vice because enforcement is imperfect has already surrendered its moral compass.
Slavery has never been only about chains and whips. At its core, slavery is about dominion – one will mastering another for profit.
Scripture speaks plainly: “Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are…” (Romans 6:16). Bondage does not require physical imposition when desire itself has been captured. Nor does Scripture excuse those who profit from another’s downfall: “Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink…” (Habakkuk 2:15).
The moral weight falls not only on the one ensnared, but on the one who lays the snare.
The Thirteenth Amendment abolished one form of slavery. It did not abolish humanity’s capacity to invent new ones, especially those that hide behind the language of choice.
Vice does not shackle the body, but it colonizes the will. When entire industries are built on that colonization, communities are hollowed out, families are fractured, and lives are quietly wasted.
True freedom is not the right to be exploited. It is the power to govern oneself, and the moral resolve of a society to protect that power, especially in the vulnerable.
Until we recover that understanding, we will continue to outlaw slavery in name while tolerating bondage in fact – and remain a largely free people who nevertheless permit forms of captivity that strip freedom from many.
