ZERO-TOLERANCE NOT ALWAYS RIGHT ANSWER

The ugly specter of "zero tolerance" has again raised its head.

And as has been the case with other zero-tolerance issues, the concept of a
"one-strike" drug policy for public housing has taken common sense out of
the equation of rules enforcement.

A California case involving four senior citizens who were tossed out of
public housing under a zero-tolerance drug law has reached the Supreme
Court. The rules enacted in 1988 say if a family member is caught with
drugs, the whole family can be evicted.

The main question at issue seems to be one about whether or not the
government has the right to enact tough standards to control bad behavior
in public housing.

But the issue runs deeper than that. It is an issue of human behavior.

What often happens, and what as happened in one of the four California
seniors' cases, is that a young family member is caught with drugs and the
whole family is tossed out.

With the increasing number of grandparents raising their grandchildren, the
opportunities for this law to bounce grandmothers and grandfathers into the
streets seems endless.

And while it is easy to become emotionally outraged about the sight of
seniors bounced because of the conduct of young members of their families,
it also should not be easy to tolerate seeing public housing turned into
the ultimate drug-dealing neighborhood in any community.

Prior to the enactment of such rules, it was easy for families to turn a
blind eye toward an illicit source of income or to ignore the problem to
maintain legal deniability. Often, the excuses heard in court was that no
one else in the household knew about the drug dealing going on right in he
other room.

Now, the same defense is ineffective.

That would seem to be that. The drug problem in public housing should be gone.

Except the rules fail to account for all situations. No law really can.

There are legitimate cases where the rules are too severe. In one of the
California cases, a 63-year-old Oakland woman was kicked out of the house
because a mentally handicapped granddaughter was caught with cocaine three
blocks from home.

While the rules would seem to say the family must take better care of every
member of the family, can anyone reasonably be expected to be able to stop
illegal acts taking place outside the home at any given time?

One would hope that the young people in a house are given the proper tools
to make responsible decisions, but young people do fall into bad behavior
even from the best of homes.

Should the entire family suffer simply because the rules are the rules?

There ought to be a middle ground involving some kind of review panel by
the housing authorities and tenants councils and other local review bodies
before blind "zero tolerance" is applied.

We are not saying drug abuse should be tolerated. We are not advocating a
return to the days where any housing project could be expected to be a drug
and crime center.

We are saying that, as was the case with zero-tolerance weapons policies
resulting in honors students being tossed from schools for possession of
penknives or apple-parers, the rules go too far from common sense.

People can make decisions based on evidence and knowing the character of
other people.

Blind zero-tolerance eliminates that facet of life.

And blind zero-tolerance does not, despite its across-the-board
application, keep the government out of court.