With Lives at Stake, Moralizing Is Cruel
By Richard Cohen

WASHINGTONMy 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 condomsa 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 who are 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 Tuesday in the
American Journal of Public Health.

The study compared ninth graders 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 activeabout 60 percent in each casebut the New York kids
were more likely to use a condom.

The difference is not dramatic 60.8 percent of the New Yorkers versus
55.5 percent of the Chicagoans used condomsbut that does not mean that
it is insignificant. About 40,000 new H[V 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
madeare 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 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 needle exchange programs also will
decrease the spread of AIDS. 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, Joseph Califano Jr., the president of the National Center on
Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, wrote an oped essay
in The Washington Post pleading with the residents of the District of
Columbia to reject a proposal to make the medicinal use of marijuana legal.

Mr. Califano is one of the smartest men I know, but in not one paragraph of
his essay does he explain why allowing cancer patients a medicinal toke is
such an awful idea. The essay is yet another attempt to show that pot is a
gateway drugthe 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 submitexcept 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 is right and
wrongChina, 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, 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 rightnot when people suffer or die
as a result.