High School Justice

My wife says I extrapolate too much from my own adolescence. She's undoubtedly right, but I still think my high school taught me at least one useful lesson about law enforcement: Left to their own devices, the enforcers will punish the relatively innocent and spare the truly guilty. Why? Well, obviously because it's so much easier to punish the relatively innocent. They're well-behaved. They buy into the rules, even if they sometimes run afoul of them. And that means, in turn, that their parents basically buy into them. The truly guilty see no reason to sit quietly in detention. They care nothing for their permanent record. Their parents don't necessarily care any more for the rules than they do. And if you're a teacher or principal, you need to be seen enforcing the law. So you enforce it on the enforceable, on the people who'll go along with the process, even if they aren't the ones who cause the most trouble.

I'd like to think the real world is different. But at times I wonder. In recent weeks, FDA has sent a rash of warning letters to pharmaceutical companies that failed to include safety information in their 10- to 15-word Google text-link ads, and admonished Cheerios for saying that a diet rich in whole grains is good for your heart, rather than saying that a diet rich in whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and fiber is good for your heart, as they are explicitly permitted to do.