Pubdate: Tue, 26 Jul 2005
Source: St. Petersburg Times (FL)
Copyright: 2005 St. Petersburg Times
Contact: http://www.sptimes.com/letters/
Website: http://www.sptimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/419
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hea.htm (Higher Education Act)

ANTIDRUG OVERKILL

Making drug offenders ineligible for federal student aid runs counter 
to rehabilitation efforts. The law should be dropped or at least scaled back.

One need not excuse a university student who smokes marijuana to 
understand why yanking the student out of school usually serves no 
one's longterm interest. But that is one of Congress' key weapons in 
the war on drugs.

Under a law adopted five years ago, any drug conviction, even 
misdemeanor marijuana possession, makes a current or prospective 
university student immediately ineligible for federal financial aid. 
The result, of course, is that most of those students no longer have 
the means to pursue a higher education. So they drop out or never 
attend in the first place. According to a coalition of groups trying 
to overturn the law, some 160,500 students have lost aid that way.

"It's contrary to every theory of rehabilitation," says Hernando 
assistant public defender Elizabeth Osmond.

In Washington, the House Education and the Workforce Committee took 
only a half-step Friday toward giving students a second chance. It 
sent to the full House a Higher Education Act that would allow 
federal aid, under certain circumstances, for students who have past 
drug convictions. But the committee defeated an effort to drop the 
ban altogether.

Some 240 organizations and 115 student governments have petitioned 
Congress to get rid of the ban. They aren't arguing that drug use 
should be legalized, or that students should be freed of 
responsibility or criminal sanction. Their point is that young people 
do make mistakes and removing them from college only makes it more 
likely they will make more. That's how some of them end up being 
criminals as adults.

"For people who are having a hard time with their lives," says David 
Borden, executive director of the Drug Reform Coordination Network, 
"this is discouragement at exactly the time when they've decided to try."

Apparently, members of Congress consider marijuana smoking as a 
"youthful indiscretion" only when required to acknowledge their own.
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MAP posted-by: Beth