WHERE'S THE CRIME WHEN NO ONE COMPLAINS?

Government must jail robbers, rapists and killers. Most Americans see
stoners, bookies and hookers differently. They inspire the question: Should
every sin also be a crime? If rolling dice and rolling in the hay truly are
evil, hell awaits the guilty.

Last year, British nanny Louise Woodward was sentenced to the 279 days she
spent awaiting trial for shaking to death 8-month-old Matthew Eappen. Mary
Kay LeTourneau was given six months in jail for the child rape of her
13-year-old student. Will Foster also was imprisoned for growing marijuana.
He says he wanted to treat his arthritis, but was convicted of intending to
sell. The sentence? Ninety-three years behind bars.

"In America, to have committed a crime, there used to have to be a victim,"
Foster says from his Texas cell. "I haven't molested a child. I haven't
killed anybody. ... I never hurt nobody."

ABC newsman John Stossel examines this moral inversion in "Sex, Drugs and
Consenting Adults," a one-hour special that airs Tuesday at 10 p.m. In this
provocative and often chilling program, Stossel finds government eager to
stop the private behavior of grown men and women, even when they don't
tread on the persons or property of others.

Standing beside the Statue of Liberty, Stossel presents eye-opening scenes
of government quashing victimless crimes, often with brute force. One man
squirms on the sidewalk with a police revolver at his head. As a cop sticks
his fingers deep into the suspect's mouth, triggering his gag reflex,
Stossel explains the authorities "say this man took illegal drugs. No
victim complained about what he did."

Smart bombs aside, government seldom is tougher than when it fights
narcotics. While hazardous, drugged drivers should be prosecuted, should
Americans be proud that officials have jailed 400,000 people "because they
were caught with forbidden chemicals," as Stossel puts it?

Stossel interviews Jesuit Father Joseph Kane of the Bronx. He acknowledges
the risks of addiction but blames narcotics-related violence on "the cost
of the drug." As he says, "When you make that drug illegal, you have raised
the price to such an extent that I'm going to kill you to get your street
corner" as a sales outlet.

Hypocrisy often accompanies government's suppression of consensual crimes.
Stossel shows a cop arresting a man for taking bets on basketball games.
But if gambling truly is immoral, why did 20 states sponsor last week's
Powerball lottery craze? Americans lined up for hours to buy tickets, even
though winning the $195 million jackpot was an 80 million-to-one shot.
Mafia numbers rackets offer better odds. While informal gamblers face jail,
state coffers overflow with lotto money.

Critics now call U.S. narcotics policy "the War on Some Drugs." Despite
anti-cigarette legislation on Capitol Hill, tobacco remains a federally
subsidized crop. Wine still pours at White House banquets. As inmate Will
Foster observes: "You have the right to kill yourself with alcohol, but you
cannot smoke a joint."

As if government's hands were not already full, cigarettes eventually could
bring cops running. Stossel asks Drug Enforcement Agency chief Tom
Constantine if tobacco should be illegal. "When we look down the road,"
Constantine says, "I would say 10, 15, 20 years from now, in a gradual
fashion, smoking will probably be outlawed in the United States."

While secondhand smoke is at least a nuisance, there is no such thing as
secondhand sex. That's why government control of private sexual behavior is
so foolish. Georgia's penal code, for instance, forbids devices "useful
primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs." In June 1996, 15 to
20 Atlanta cops in black ski masks raided 9 1/2 Weeks, an adult
entertainment shop. They seized boxes of vibrators and other sex toys and
arrested the staff. "That's the taxpayers' money hard at work," says the
store's manager.

Stossel found Heather Smith, a prostitute who allows ABX's camera into a
hotel room where her client also agrees to be photographed. Smith
poignantly notes that, "It's legal for two men to go into a boxing ring and
beat each other bloody for money, but it's not legal for me to go in and
give someone sexual pleasure for money. What kind of sense does that make?"

But should society applaud prostitutes? Should Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss
be the next grand marshall of the Rose Parade? Few would say so. However,
people like Fleiss should not be incarcerated for doing things that rattle
some people but do them no material harm.

Stossel acknowledges that "being free doesn't mean there are no rules."
Government must secure its citizens' liberties and jail robbers, rapists
and killers. Most Americans, however, see stoners, bookies and hookers
differently. They inspire the question: Should every sin also be a crime?

If rolling dice and rolling in the hay truly are evil, Hell - or at least
the quiet of the casket - awaits the guilty. The clergy exist to nudge
people away from temptation and toward salvation. But after watching John
Stossel's powerful special, viewers likely will want the state to shield
them from violent strangers rater than from friends and loved ones with
unorthodox appetites.

Checked-by: jwjohnson@netmagic.net (Joel W. Johnson)