# Is there any reason face clothing is more difficult to police than other clothing?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-reason-face-clothing-is-more-difficult-to-police-than-other-clothing/920450>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [September 12, 2020, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-reason-face-clothing-is-more-difficult-to-police-than-other-clothing/920450 "2020-09-12T19:46:28Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 2

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\
**Post date:** [September 21, 2020, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-reason-face-clothing-is-more-difficult-to-police-than-other-clothing/920450/21 "2020-09-21T20:42:48Z")

</div>

> [@Pantastic](#):
>
> And enforcing rules on public behavior that a significant percentage of people disagree with is very easy and routinely done.

I think you’re glossing over a lot of detail in your examples, and when you look closely they don’t support your side of the argument very well.

> [@Pantastic](#):
>
> And drug laws continue to be rigidly enforced despite majority opposition in many places (including federally). Prohibition (alcohol) had significant opposition, but enforcement in public establishments was nearly complete

There are three marijuana dispensaries in walking distance of my house, so I’d generally dispute the claim that our drug laws are rigidly enforced. They are _incredibly_ selectively enforced.

My understanding of both alcohol and drug prohibition were that those interventions were not easy or effective. Yes, people were arrested, but the flow and use of drugs and alcohol continued. A good lesson to learn from the War on Drugs is that it’s really hard to enforce rules against things that people want to do. We’ve built a massive police force and eroded civil liberties with deleterious societal side effects and people still do lots of drugs.

> [@Pantastic](#):
>
> There was huge opposition to various public smoking bans when they were implemented, but those laws were enforced and are the new normal. Same with helmet laws, seat belt laws, and DUI laws

I don’t know much about the history of opposition to seat belt/helmet laws (feel free to provide more detail to show how they really do support your claims), but public smoking bans were phased in slowly over time, often at a municipal level and then a state level as growing knowledge about the dangers of smoking and general societal disapproval of it grew.

And DUI laws were originally passed not long after the advent of the automobile, but weren’t really taken very seriously until the 1980s, when _political_ groups like MADD pushed for serious enforcement.

So I think both of those really emphasize how different mask requirements are. We didn’t have a few decades of growing realization that masks were an important public health behavior, we had a sudden event that introduced lots of new information, and a lot of people don’t want to go along with it (for what I agree are mostly dumb reasons).

We enforce DUI laws and smoking bans because the vast majority of people _want_ them enforced (even if they didn’t right when the laws were passed) and the few scofflaws can be dealt with efficiently. It took a lot of time to get there, time we just haven’t had yet with mask requirements.

[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-reason-face-clothing-is-more-difficult-to-police-than-other-clothing/920450.md?page=1)