Group Model of Drug Laws

According to the group model of law, laws result from a battle between competing groups, each trying to impose their concept of morality and justice onto the body of law. The group that compiles the most resources shapes the law in its image. These groups are issue-specific—they do not correlate to Democrats or Republicans, young or old, or north or south, and unlike the elite model of law, these groups are made up of coalitions of elites and non-elites.

Important agents in these conflicts are moral entrepreneurs: individuals who set out to champion a specific moral cause. Moral entrepreneurs may be politicians, or may campaign for office on a platform based around that cause, or they may be simple activists—even apolitical—depending on the cause. Movements in American history that were predominantly driven by moral entrepreneurs include abolition, the Temperance movement, women's suffrage, the civil rights movement, and the pro-life movement—as well as smaller movements like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, consumer safety groups, and recent grassroots campaigns against childhood vaccinations. The term moral entrepreneurs was coined by sociologist Howard S. Becker, who further divided moral entrepreneurs into two types: rule creators and rule enforcers.

[Page 336]Rule creators are moral crusaders who are principally occupied with persuading others to believe in their cause, generally a desired change in the social order or system. Examples of causes in drug law championed by moral crusaders include not only the temporary prohibition of alcohol and the successful prohibition of other drugs, but groups that have sought to raise awareness of glue-sniffing and paint-huffing, to restrict access to potentially dangerous or abused prescription drugs, and to limit psychiatric medication of minors.

Rule enforcers do not bring about change like those crusaders do; they uphold the status quo. They include police officers and others in law enforcement, regulators, and others who are tasked with enforcing the rules crusaders have brought about. Becker's view of these enforcers has interesting resonance with later criticisms of the War on Drugs. Rule enforcers are driven by the need to justify both the necessity and the efficacy of their role, two things at odds with one another. If they are too effective, they obsolesce themselves, but if they are not effective enough, they have failed. Their need is best served if they are able to constantly produce results showing that they are effective at their work without reducing the future need for that work—though Becker does not suggest that this is a decision consciously made. It is more like an equilibrium that would be reached when being tugged by those opposing needs. Generating arrests and drug seizures in the course of anti-narcotics work, without reducing the demand for drugs or the future success of the drug trade, would be an example of that equilibrium in the drug war. Rule enforcers tend to become pessimistic because of their frequent exposure to those who deviate from the rules, and especially to the worst such deviants.