Zero-sum risky behavior and sex ed

Clownhall.com columnist Jackie Gingrich Gingrich Gingrich Cushman Gingrich is worried. Diving boards are in decline:

Steve Moore, in his Wall Street Journal June 23, 2006 article, "Off the Deep End," blames the decline in diving boards in the United States on the trial lawyers...

Moore believes that this shift to ensure that everyone stay safe is cultural as well as legal. "We Americans have become so risk averse when it comes to our children that we now see unacceptable dangers from even the most routine activities.

"It's not even clear that all these risk-reducing measures keep us safer. ... If they can't get their thrills from diving boards, they will find other risky activities."

This leads to the question of where they will find these thrills -- other physical activities or drugs and illegal behavior?

...a University of Michigan study ... found "the proportion of 18-year-olds who report using methamphetamines in the past year has fallen by almost two thirds since 1999." This decline has been offset by "a rise in cocaine, heroin and Oxycontin, a painkiller that can be abused."

This data reinforces Moore's suggestion that a decline in one risky behavior leads to an increase in a substitute, which also includes risky activity. So, while we might be saving them from the diving board - are we pushing them to find thrills in other areas, such as methamphetamines, cocaine or the choking game? "The Speedy Decline" states, "It's as though teenagers have a fixed quota of worry, which merely moves from drug to drug." I would rather they worry about diving boards than drugs.

Maybe, instead of engaging in a war against drugs, or a crusade against diving boards, it's time for us, like the British (how often do we say that?) to rise up and declare that we want some good old-fashioned American fun.

This zero-sum model of risky behavior is intriguing. If we applied it across the board, I wonder whether support for abstinence-only sex-ed would persist. After all, even if we grant that sex is bad for teenagers, surely protected sex isn't as bad as unprotected anal sex. And I'd think that getting hooked on meth would generally be considered worse than their having protected sex.

I don't expect that Newt Gingrich's baby girl will be offering up that suggestion any time soon. More's the shame. Comprehensive sex ed saves lives, and since kids are gonna fool around no matter what, better that they do it in ways that are safe and well-informed.