Needed: Better risk perspective for teens

Perhaps the most predictable staple of social commentary has been the degeneracy of the young. The founder of this genre, Socrates, worried about the moral probity of the Athenian boys of his day (girls, like slaves, were beneath his notice). The young, of course, are our future, and some apprehension is proper. Nevertheless, I am distressed at how often fears and concerns regarding the young grow out of adult doubts and insecurities.

Crusades on behalf of strict and uniform moral codes are as American as apple pie. Unlike most other nations, almost all of us are “from away” and are descendants of vastly different ethnic and religious backgrounds. A complex and fictive nation living in a world of increasing interdependence can easily become an anxious nation. We wonder who we are and seek to give solidity and truth to that self-definition. One way to ease our anxieties is to portray those who differ from what we are or think we are as “outsiders,” enemies regardless of the danger they pose to our lifestyles. Rather than build a world with as much space for individuality as possible, we seek to make everyone in our own image.

The current “war” on marijuana consumption by the young fits this pattern. Some of our most distinguished leaders, themselves often former users, now tell us that marijuana consumption by the young is a public-health crisis. The government’s own studies, however, cast as much doubt on this message as do the careers of the messengers. Summarizing recent federally funded drug studies, In These Times editor Daniel Lazare points out that marijuana poses no more risk than fashionable legal drugs. No credible study suggests that marijuana inevitably leads to more dangerous drugs or even remotely approaches tobacco or alchohol in terms of toxicity or addictive capacity. Defoliants currently deployed to destroy the plant constitute its greatest known risk.

While I am not suggesting that any drug is benign, there is a proportionality problem here that begs for explanation. When was the last time you heard of a convenience store owner jailed as a “cigarette kingpin”? Heaven help the teen-ager caught selling marijuana to fellow students. By any count, the number of children killed or paralyzed as a result of marijuana use in cars or any other venue pales in comparison to the number of drug-free youngsters killed or maimed in auto or occupational accidents. Nonetheless, few here in Maine or nationally suggest that we postpone the age at which our children begin working or driving or, heaven forbid, seek safer alternatives to current modes of work and transit. Such reforms are economically feasible, but do not fit current political and cultural norms.

Placing drug wars in their historical context suggests one perspective in this puzzle. The drugs we associate with outsiders — those who differ either racially or politically — are always the most susupect ones. In the late 19th century, many urban police forces changed their revolvers from .32 to .38 caliber because they believed coke-addicted African-Americans were invulnerable to the smaller weapon. At the height of the Red Scare in 1919, the mayor of New York established a commission to probe heroin consumption by radicals.

Even today, we worry most about the drugs and drug-use patterns among the most marginal groups of the population. We harshly punish the use of crack cocaine by inner-city African-Americans even as we turn a more gentle eye toward powdered forms consumed by white commodity traders. While drug use by affluent whites dwarfs consumption by other groups, we pack our prisons disproportionately with minorities convicted of drug offenses.

Just as we define minorities by virtue of their color, their culture and often their particular forms of social recreation and escape as security risks, we paint teen-agers with a similar brush. Inhabiting an ill-defined territory between adulthood and childhood, modern teen-agers have always evoked anxiety. They have, or seem to have, a personal freedom we at once envy and resent. Teen-agers who display their disenchantment with the values of our school or workplaces — by bad grades, by being late, by being moody — are especially inviting targets.

We subject teen-agers, just like African-Americans, to a disproportionate amount of juridicial scrutiny. Many administrators today are no longer content with the justifiable decision to remove dangerous or disruptive teen-agers from the classroom or to educate students honestly about risks. They would rush to deny students’ civil liberities by perusing their lockers or even bodies for illicit substances. We include students in a long roster, beginning with Athenian slaves, of groups implicitly regarded as subhuman. Should we be surprised at the conclusions some teen-agers draw about “authority”?

I too am concerned about the future of my children. I know that any drug can have deleterious consequences. I worry far more, however, about the stresses and indignities in too many schools and workplaces. Neither acknowledged nor addressed, these lead too many of all ages to seek persistent and genuinely dangerous modes of escape. Most of all, I worry about what some adults in their anxieties do to children so that they can ease doubts about their own lives.

John Buell is a political economist who lives in Southwest Harbor.