{"id":255,"date":"2007-07-21T12:27:00","date_gmt":"2007-07-21T18:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/2007\/07\/21\/moral-panic-in-needle-park\/"},"modified":"2007-07-21T12:27:00","modified_gmt":"2007-07-21T18:27:00","slug":"moral-panic-in-needle-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/2007\/07\/21\/moral-panic-in-needle-park\/","title":{"rendered":"(moral) panic in needle park"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>this is the story of a short-lived moral panic and the challenges of leadership positions in law enforcement. earlier this month, the police chief in the peaceful college town of northfield, minnesota, called a press conference<\/a> to alert the media to an emerging heroin epidemic.<\/p>\n

according to media accounts, he estimated that up to 250 heroin users in and around northfield high were feeding habits of up to $800 per day — and that this group was responsible for a major<\/em> spike in the local crime rate.<\/p>\n

some were called to action, others scoffed, and some of us just scratched our heads. i never doubted that some kids in northfield had tried heroin, but the claims seemed overblown. since 1999, heroin use has declined significantly among high school students<\/a>. according to the 2006 monitoring the future data, only about 1.4 percent of 12th graders had even tried the drug and only .8 percent had ever done so intravenously.<\/p>\n

yes, heroin can be found an hour north in minneapolis and, i suppose, the drug may have found its way to some carleton <\/em>or st. olaf <\/em>dorm room, but $800 per day? that’s a mother-superior-sized habit. also, the picture painted at the meeting — of the town’s high-achieving valedictorians stealing everything that wasn’t nailed down — just smacked<\/em> of hyperbole. frankly, in the absence of some<\/em> corroborating evidence from schools, hospitals, or treatment centers, such claims called to mind reefer madness<\/em><\/a> <\/em>or, worse, j. peterman.*<\/p>\n

now, just a couple weeks later, the good people of northfield and the town’s feral youth<\/a> have questioned the chief’s evidence and his claims. and the chief, in turn, has taken an indefinite leave of absence. i don’t write to ridicule the chief, because i don’t doubt his motives. this didn’t strike me as a cynical search for a scapegoat to explain the rise in property crime; nor did it strike me as intentionally hyping a story to garner resources for the department. i just think the chief saw a problem and reacted strongly. who knows? he might be proven right after all. at least the town is having better-informed drug policy discussions<\/a>.<\/p>\n

in my view, this case illustrates the value of asking “where’s your data?” <\/em>before taking big policy steps regarding crime and drug use. as soon as the evidentiary base was examined in northfield, the system seemed to self-correct and the moral panic was averted.<\/p>\n

*That’s right Elaine. white lotus, yam-yam, shanghai sally…I too once fell under the spell of opium. It was 1979. I was travelling the Yangtzee in search of a Mongolian horsehair vest…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

this is the story of a short-lived moral panic and the challenges of leadership positions in law enforcement. earlier this month, the police chief in the peaceful college town of northfield, minnesota, called a press conference to alert the media to an emerging heroin epidemic. according to media accounts, he estimated that up to 250 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}