Up Against Moral Zealots

By Richard Cohen

My first indication that access to condoms did not lead to increased
sexual activity occurred when I was a teenager and my friend Irv settled a
poker debt by giving me a condom. I placed it in my wallet and there it
stayed, unused for so long that, like the trees of the Petrified Forest,
it turned to stone. Had I not lost that wallet, it would today be a
tourist attraction.

Now comes somewhat more scientific evidence that access to condoms a
part of AIDS education programs in a few public schools does not
increase the rate of sexual activity. It does, however, increase the rate
of condom use by teenagers already sexually active, which is, after all,
the whole point. The study was done in New York and Chicago.

In due course, I expect another study to rebut the one just published,
because that, it seems, is the way these things go. In the meantime,
though, attention must be paid to what was published in the American
Journal of Public Health. The study compared ninthgraders in New York who
had access to condoms in school to ninth graders in Chicago who did not.
The Chicago kids were just as sexually active about 60 percent in each
case but the New York kids were more likely to use a condom.

The difference was not dramatic 60.8 percent of the New Yorkers vs.
55.5 percent of the Chicagoans used condoms but that does not mean that
it is insignificant. Some 40,000 new HIV infections annually occur among
teenagers, not to mention about 3 million infections of other sexually
transmitted diseases. It is not too much to suspect that the condom access
program, available in an infinitesimal number of schools, has already
saved some lives.

The arguments against such a program and they are vociferously made
are two: It will only increase sexual activity among teenagers, and it
puts an official imprimatur on what, after all, is proscribed activity. As
for the first argument, the recent study seems to disprove it. As for the
second, it is beyond scientific analysis. It is essentially a moral
argument.

But even moral beliefs ought to make some sense. It stands to reason
that condoms will reduce AIDS cases and other sexually transmitted
diseases. Similarly, it stands to reason that needleexchange programs
also will decrease AIDS, since used needles are often the culprit in the
spread of HIV. Finally, it makes sense to allow cancer patients and other
sick people to use marijuana for medicinal purposes even though the drug
itself is illegal.

In all these cases, a zealous moralism overwhelms clear thinking. Just
this week, for instance, Joseph A. Califano Jr., the president of the
National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University,
wrote an oped essay pleading with the residents of the District of
Columbia to reject a proposal to make the medicinal use of marijuana
legal.

Califano is one of the smartest men I know, but in not one paragraph
of the 10 in his essay [Sept. 30] does he explain why allowing cancer
patients a medicinal toke is such an awful idea. The essay, really, is yet
another attempt to show that pot is a gateway drug the inch that leads
to the mile of heroin, cocaine and other addictions.

Well, maybe. But what has that to do with an attempt to ameliorate the
effects of chemotherapy or relieve the pressure of glaucoma? Nothing, I
would submit except that the drug in question is illegal. It apparently
induces such fervor in some people that they lose the capacity to
distinguish between a teenager in a school bathroom and a cancer patient
in a hospital room.

We Americans are a moral lot always have been, probably always will
be. We are forever telling the rest of the world what's right and wrong
China, for instance, on human rights, France about whether it should trade
with Iran. China scoffs, the French ooze scorn, but more often than not,
we are right and they are wrong, although being right is not the same as
being practical. Part of our charm, I think, is our naivete.

But one cannot be a virgin over and over again. Once it is established
that condom distribution does not lead to the Sodom and Gomorrization of
our public schools (at least condoms don't increase it any), then it is a
bit cruel to oppose the program and too bad about the kids who get
AIDS. It is the same with needle exchanges and the medicinal use of
marijuana. Sometimes, moral is not the same as right not when people
suffer or die as a result.