What constitutes a crime? I'd argue, as did the Founders of this great nation, that an action can only be a crime if the rights of another are infringed upon, or if their person or property is threatened, damaged, or destroyed.
Marijuana was legal in the United States of America since it's inception in 1775 until 1937, when the alcoholic beverage industry, the pharmacutical industry, the cotton industry and the wood paper/pulp industry got together and lobbied Congress to pass the Marijuana Tax Act because industrial hemp and marijuana were threats to their livlihoods. It is a fact that the United States Constitution, the greatest document written since the Bible, is written on hemp paper. I dare say that if that same document was written on woodpaper, we wouldn't be able to go down to Washington DC and see it with our own two eyes.
Now, back to the definition of a crime. I would like to quote Thomas Jefferson, the man responsible for authoring a bulk of the US Constitution:
"No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him."
--Thomas Jefferson to Francis Gilmer, 1816.
"Laws provide against injury from others, but not from ourselves."
--Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Religion
"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others."
--Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia
"The care of every man's soul belongs to himself. But what if he neglect the care of it? Well what if he neglect the care of his health or his estate, which would more nearly relate to the state. Will the magistrate make a law that he not be poor or sick? Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves. God himself will not save men against their wills."
--Thomas Jefferson
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"An unjust law is no law at all"
--Thomas Jefferson
and finally...
"Resistence to tyrants is obedience to God."
-- Thomas Jefferson's motto
I would also like to take a quick second to have you think about something said by Abraham Lincoln:
"Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of Temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes at the very principles upon which our government was founded."
--Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln raises an interesting point when he says prohibition "makes a crime out of things that are not crimes." It seems that our generation has lost the basic ideals which were the fibers binding our country together; that with food in the cupboards and money in the bank, we have forgotten to hold close what is most dear to us: our Liberty.
And what of the Constitutional Amendment passed by the States, outlining the alcohol Prohibition? Why have we seen no such actions taken to the States for this prohibition? Do we not have a 9th and 10th Amendment? Does the US Constitution no longer limit the Federal government, instead limiting our Rights and Liberties to only those 10 Amendments in the Bill Of Rights? I believe not.
I would argue, in the same vein as our Founding Fathers, that a crime is an action that violates rights; that a crime must have a victim and a perpetrator; that a crime cannot be commited against ones self; I would argue that it is not the role of the State to protect one from himself.