The Absurdity Of Drug-Free School Zones

July 23, 2012

Robert Evans, writing for Cracked.com, explains the absurd paradox of our nation’s Drug-Free School Zones:

[I]n order to differentiate a “drugs BAD” area from the surrounding “drugs kinda not OK, we guess” areas, someone needs to set actual borders of the drug-free zone. The particular border distance the authorities picked was 1,000 feet from the premises, which sounds pretty reasonable on paper … until you think about just how many schools and other kid-frequented zones there are in any urban area. Each of those is itself a “don’t sell drugs here” zone, plus a ring of about three city blocks in every direction. At which point you will probably find yourself on the border of another drug-free zone. When you map out all of the intersecting circles, basically every city is one giant, pulsating mass of overlapping drug-free zones.

Which, of course, completely defeats the purpose. The dealers couldn’t abide by the zoning rules even if they wanted to, because the zones are freaking everywhere. Researchers in New Jersey have concluded that only 9 percent of drug deals are committed outside a school zone’s drug-free limits. In Massachusetts, 80 percent of drug deals happen within a zone. Not because the dealers are all selling to kids, but because the zones are unavoidable (only 1 percent of those sales involved a minor). So they’re right back where they were before: The penalty for selling right on the baseball diamond is the same as selling anywhere else, so what does it matter?

So why not change the policy and shrink the zones so they represent meaningful borders? Politics, of course. As Evans notes, any politician who suggests shrinking these zones is accused of wanting to bring drug dealers closer to our children. The irony is that the accuser, if anyone, is the one who’s helping to make that happen. Yet even that statement is absurd, given that the overwhelming number of drug transactions that take place in “drug free school zones” are between two consenting adults, and not school children.

This is, sadly, another example of how “tough on crime” policies often encourage the very problem they seek to solve, like draconian sex offender laws that encourage recidivism rather than protecting future victims. When you leave a person with no place left to stand, they will stand where they please, because you’ve made all the world a trespass. The poverty of the retributive impulse is barest in cases like this, where outrage can be manufactured cheaply, and politics thereby obscures more effective policy decisions.

7:31pm | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZMMjnxPz2e2x

(Notes: 57)