A coercive policy imposes external restrictions on individual liberties to achieve public health goals. Coercion would involve legal limitations on sexual freedom, compulsory use of the antibody screening test, the registration of persons seropositive for the AIDS antibody, the listing of risk groups, punishment for sexual activity, and quarantine. A voluntary policy would make primary use of public education and the uncoerced use of the screening test. Inappropriate coercion is most likely to be proposed for intravenous drug users, since this high-risk group is responsible for most heterosexual transmission of AIDS. The coercive methods proposed will most likely be enforced screening in treatment programs and incarceration for recalcitrant seropositives. Coercive measures for this population will not work, however, unless the entire needle-using population in the United States can be identified and incarcerated. Before coercive methods are attempted, intervention should be organized around an intensive, voluntary use of the screening test to find seropositives, so they may be treated and instructed in measures to prevent infection of others. 8 notes.