THE WAR ON DRUGS' NEW WEAPON

Beginning July 1, changes to the Federal Higher Education Act will take
effect, altering the process by which students apply for financial aid.
Initially passed in 1998, the act contains a provision that makes a clean
drug record a condition for granting financial aid. Previously, the
question about drug convictions on the Free Application for Federal Student
Aid (FAFSA) form was optional. Now, under the new law, a response is mandatory.

Students with a single conviction for a drug related offense are subject to
having their aid suspended for one year. The second offense results in a
two-year suspension of aid, and the third conviction causes aid to be
suspended indefinitely.

What does Congress hope to accomplish with this regulation? The ostensible
answer would seem to be that the potential denial of financial aid would
serve as a deterrent to college students contemplating experimenting with
drugs. Realistically speaking, however, it is more likely that the new
regulation will simply encourage dishonesty among applicants.

Students on 25 college campuses, along with the NAACP, have moved in
protest of the new law, claiming that it is unfair, and demanding
congressional repeal.

This newest outgrowth of the hideously unsuccessful "War on Drugs" campaign
is nothing more than another piecemeal solution to a problem that seems to
pervade society to its deepest levels. Predicated on the "carrot and stick"
deterrence ideology, Congress hopes to transform eligibility for financial
aid from an American right into a prize to be awarded to those displaying
desirable behavior profiles. Noble ambitions aside, however, it must be
noted that the law is, by its nature, inherently discriminatory.

Targeting a minority of college students, the financially disadvantaged,
reveals the presupposition, carried by the discourse of the law and its
enforcement, that poverty is synonymous with criminality. Is this really a
tenable assumption? It is impossible to know what percentage of those
students who do not need financial aid have been convicted of drug
offenses, because there is no such question on the general university
application for admission.

The unevenness of the new law places those students who rely on financial
aid at a disadvantage, proclaiming their proclivity to "socially deviant"
behavior on the basis of their economic background. This sort of
stigmatization seems equivocal to a sort of "class profiling," placing
individuals into a category with a set of presumed characteristics
requiring closer scrutiny and greater governmental regulation. Such
"profiling" has been found discriminatory with respect to race, and there
appears to be a direct parallel with the discrimination that will probably
occur under the new law.

Additionally, the law is fundamentally unenforceable. Students wishing to
protect their financial aid eligibility will lie on their applications. How
can the already overtaxed resources of university financial aid offices be
expected to verify the criminal record of each and every applicant? Will
such offices learn to rely on FBI-like background checks to ensure that no
drug offender receives federal money? What would that procedure cost?

Legislation of this kind, intended to further a societal goal at the
expense of reducing individual liberties, might work in the case of
affirmative action. The higher education act, however, seems incapable of
achieving its lofty goal of purifying college campuses. If the impetus
behind Congress' action is to reduce drug use among college students,
targeting the few while ignoring the debauchery of the many is the wrong
way to go about it. No wonder people are protesting.

Congress has a historically established predilection to occasionally
attempt to legislate morality. Prohibition, abortion proscription, and
similar laws have always sparked protest from segments of the population
and have almost always failed to accomplish what was intended. What place
is there for punitive anti-drug regulations in higher education? Aren't the
penalties incurred from a drug conviction serious enough?

The message that the government seems to be transmitting with this new law
is different from that of the "War on Drugs" generally. No longer are those
who use drugs merely uneducated. Now they are unfit to be educated. Why
not, in the interest of fairness, just require every college applicant to
answer the drug conviction question prior to admission, and then bar those
with drug records from attending college at all? The effect would be the
same, only not so discriminatory.