ARRESTING SIN

Can Stricter Laws and Enhanced Enforcement Subdue 'Immorality'?

The public "debate" over drug policy really hasn't been a debate at all, but
a one-sided crackdown on drug users driven by misinformation, the doomed
politics of morality, and political demagoguery.

Such is the conclusion of Ken Maier, a political science and public
administration professor at Texas A&M University whose extensive research
into morality politics resulted in his book "The Politics of Sin." Maier
presented his views during a forum at Cal Poly earlier this years, sponsored
by Cal Poly's Political Science Department.

"Sin policies will fail," Maier concluded.

Using charts and graphs derived from his research, Maier presented what he
called a formal model of perversion," outlining society's approach to "sins"
like using drugs, engaging in prostitution, and other victimless crimes
outlawed for moral reasons.

Charting our "demand for sin," those with a low-to-nonexistent demand make
up perhaps 20 percent of the population, with the curve climbing upward
toward the bulk of the population, which has a median demand for sin, before
the numbers taper off as demand for sin increases, leveling out at perhaps
10 percent of the population.

For discussion purposes he broke those down into three groups: perverts, who
will sin at any cost; vicarious sinners, who may sin if the cost is low
enough; and protonerds, who won't sin, period.

While the actual demand for sin may be an arching curve, Maier explained
that "professed demand for sin" is very different, with the majority of
people voicing a low demand and the number of people getting steadily
smaller as professed demand increases.

"The striking thing about morality politics is nobody will stand up for
sin," Maier said.

As such, politicians perceive nothing but political gains from cracking down
on sin and political peril by advocating something like and end to the War
on Drugs.

"So on these issues there is no intelligent debate," Maier said.

Fueling this one-sidedness is the input from bureaucrats, who profit from
the drug war with increased resources and job security.

In fact, police often end up being the voice of the drug culture, because
they are perceived to be experts on drug use. But Maier said they are
usually anything but, further fueling the skewed picture of drug use seen by
policymakers.

That's because the vast majority of drug users encountered by police
officers are "bad people," the ones who are committing other crimes, or
cavorting with criminals, or otherwise failing to be productive members of
society.

"They only deal with the perverts," Maier said of the police. "The will
perceive the problem as significantly worse than what it is."

Police rarely encounter the upstanding professional who smokes pot at night
or occasionally eats psilocybin mushrooms, and may doubt that such
normal-looking and normal-functioning people exist.

And in the current political climate - where our children wear DARE shirts
and millions of dollars each year are given to informants for information on
drug users - most drug users opt to keep their mouths shut, be careful, and
hope they never get caught.

"As the cost of sin increases, it leaves only perverts as consumers of sin,
who will be resistant to future changes [in demand]," Maier said.

The cost of using drugs increased throughout the '80s - both in terms of
harsher criminal penalties and a negative social stigma - until drug use
rates bottomed out around 1991. Or, in Maier's lingo, until only the
perverts were breaking drug laws.

Yet rather than declaring victory for minimizing drug use, the federal
government stepped up its anti-drug campaign, escalating the war to
unprecedented levels. However illogical, Maier said, such an approach is
consistent with the history of morality politics.

"Lowering the sin levels isn't usually the political goal, it is a
vindication of values, which won't happen until the victory is complete," he
said.

But if Maier's well-researched pervert principle is correct, then complete
victory is not possible, and the wasteful drug war will continue until
policymakers conclude the value of complete drug abstinence isn't worth
vindicating.

Maier's point that "nobody will stand up for sin" was a problem repeatedly
addressed at the state convention for the National Organization for the
Reform of Marijuana Laws, which was held in Pismo Beach in February.

"We've declared war on the general public without good cause," said Keith
Stroup, an attorney who has led the national NORML organization since its
inception in 1970.

Drug users often don't actively criticize the drug war because of fear of
social and legal repercussions. But Stroup said such silence has allowed the
drug war's excesses to continue because the silence is taken by policymakers
as acceptance.

"It's time to come out of the closet. We need people to say, 'I smoke
marijuana, and there's nothing wrong with it," Stroup urged.

About one-third of Americans have smoked marijuana at some point in their
lives, but even more know people who do, or have family members who smoke
pot, or who are civil libertarians opposed to the drug war's toll on our
freedom.

"If you add all that up, we have a majority that supports our position,"
Stroup said.

That majority has revealed itself in California and the half-dozen other
states that passed measures legalizing marijuana for medical use, as well as
Oregon voters last year rejecting by a 2-to-1 margin a measure that would
have recriminalized marijuana possession (which is simply an infraction,
enforced by citation, in 11 states).

Maier seems to agree with NORML's political analysis and sees increasing
focus on the medical marijuana as a good political tactic, because it allows
people to defend marijuana use without defending sin.

"It's an attempt to deconstruct the issue," Maier said.

Thirty-seven percent of the population, or 77 million Americans, have used
illegal drugs, mostly marijuana, according to a survey conducted last year
by the federal government.

For most, drug use is part of their past, with about 11 percent of the
population reporting drug use in the past year, and 6 percent of Americans
saying they used drugs in the past month.

Age is perhaps the biggest indicator of drug use. Few older Americans use
drugs, and since they make up the vast majority of voters, that hedges
against a political backlash to the drug war.

Drug use is most common in the age bracket of 18 to 25, with about one in
four people from this group saying they smoked pot in the last year,
compared to only about one in 29\0 people older than 35 years old who say so.

Drug use among young people has increased almost every year since 1991, as
anti-drug expenditures have increased at an even faster rate.

The most recent "Biennial California Student Substance Use Survey" revealed
that 49 percent of 11th-graders say they had used illegal drugs in the past
six months, with 42 percent saying they had smoked pot.

While that might seem alarming to some, the same survey showed 75 percent
had used alcohol during that time, 47 percent drinking in the last 30 days,
and 31 percent engaging in binge drinking.

Twenty percent of 11th-graders say they drink every week, while 14 percent
smoke pot every week.

By comparison, just 16 percent of 11th-graders say they have never used
drugs or alcohol, and 23 percent say they haven't used in the last six months.

Stroup said most people understand more nuances to drug use than
politicians, who profess a more black-and-white view of drug use.

"The American people understand the difference between smoking a joint and
shooting heroin, but the politicians don't."

As a result, our country's drug laws allow war to be waged against
methamphetamine manufacturers and pot smokes with equal fevor and tactics.