Pubdate: Thu, 10 May 2001
Source: In Pittsburgh Weekly (PA)
Website: http://www.inpgh.com
Comments: contact info for Senior Editor Steve Volk
Address: 2000 East Carson St. Pittsburgh, PA 15203
Contact:  2001 In Pittsburgh Weekly and Review Publishing, LP
Fax: (412) 488-1217
Author: P.R. Taylor
Note: P.R. Taylor is a former columnist for the Pitt News
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hea.htm (Higher Education Act)

WHAT'S DUBYA SMOKING?

The administration's latest piece of drug policy is hypocritical and dumb, 
just like its chief.

Last week the Bush administration declared its intention to enforce a law 
prohibiting drug offenders from qualifying for federal student loans. Since 
George W. Bush would never have gotten into his own college without his 
family's money and influence in the first place, has admitted to having 
substance-related problems in the '80s and would never have needed a 
student loan in any case, this announcement manages to combine political 
hypocrisy and inherent idiocy with discrimination against the financially 
challenged. A better demonstration of "compassionate conservatism" would be 
hard to imagine.

I think we've got the picture now.

Certainly the national drug policy of the past two decades wasn't Bush's 
doing. But stepping up to enforce a law that perpetrates and extends the 
hysterical and wildly inaccurate assumption that there are no differences 
among drugs such as marijuana, heroin and cocaine is foolish, costly and wrong.

As anyone who doesn't live under a rock -- or, apparently, in the White 
House -- knows, there are indeed several important differences among the 
drugs. Most importantly: In contrast to heroin and cocaine, marijuana has 
no known lethal dose and does not cause physiological addiction. Ergo, 
people who smoke marijuana are most unlikely to commit violent crimes to 
support their foible.

As ex-federal agent Steve White, who worked in drug enforcement for 30 
years, recently said on PBS' Frontline, marijuana users are a distinctly 
different group of drug offenders: "intelligent, nice, professional, 
otherwise law-abiding."

The problem with prohibiting student loans for drug offenders (who have 
served their mandatory 5- to 10-year minimums for possession or so-called 
conspiracy -- as in, you know somebody who got busted for possession and 
you are therefore a conspirator) is that it effectively places them in a 
new category all by themselves. Murderers, child molesters, rapists, 
kidnappers -- all these and more may receive federal student loans.

We currently have 500,000 non-violent drug offenders locked up jail, often 
in cells recently vacated by said murderers, child molesters, rapists and 
kidnappers whose luck changed when we suddenly came to our senses and 
realized that drug offenders were so much worse. So much worse, in fact, 
that we have had to throw out the basic premise of the American penal 
system: that rehabilitation is a possible, and in fact purported, result of 
incarceration.

When you decide to deny a particular population access to education, you 
are discriminating against them in a way that I sincerely thought was 
illegal in this country.

Education is the only realistic way for adults in our society to move from 
low-wage jobs that will never meet their needs to more skilled work that 
will pay a living wage. Since only people without an independent source of 
money need to apply for student loans, only those people will suffer the 
consequences of this legislation. I'm confused; I thought this was America.

In fact, last time I checked, it was America, and I was a legal permanent 
resident single mother with two children.

I was a part of the working poor. And after an epiphany at age 30, when I 
realized that a wage of $12,000 a year would never secure my family's 
future, I started to attend class and eventually figured out how to apply 
for a student loan. I got one. Seven years later, thanks to that loan as 
well as to my own efforts, I'm no longer a part of the working poor. By the 
time I die, the government will have made the cost of the loan back with 
interest -- and thus will not be out of pocket over me or, in all ultimate 
likelihood, my children.

Keeping a person in federal prison costs $28,000 per year. We'll never get 
that money back: It's a total loss, a write-off, unless you feel it's worth 
that much to keep pot smokers off the streets.

Plus, when they get out of jail, they'll likely be poor, dispossessed and 
unlikely to get any work except that which pays minimum wage. That means 
they won't have enough money for retirement or medical treatment for the 
rest of their lives.

That will also affect future generations in their family. Guess who'll end 
up paying for that?

Lending a person money to go to school costs a maximum of $10,000 per year 
- -- recoverable, with interest.

I submit that it's in everyone's best interest for the government to offer 
education loans to anyone who wants them. I know everyone has to play 
politics, and George W. is just a normal-sized hypocrite of very little 
brain, but can we just have a little, teeny bit more thought, common sense, 
spirit of rational inquiry and fairness before we make idiotic laws that 
ultimately hit everyone where it hurts -- in the pocketbook?
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager