ADVOCACY GROUP FIGHTS AGAINST DRUG CONVICTION ACT

Group Calls On U.S. To Eliminate Act That Denies Students Financial Aid

Members of the Students for Sensible Drug Policy have recently filed
a lawsuit against the Department of Education for withholding
information that may help the advocacy group fight a law that
prevents students who are convicted on drug charges from receiving
financial aid.

The law was enacted in 1998 when Congress decided against allocating
federal taxpayer-funded student aid to students convicted of drug
offenses. Students were then required to disclose whether or not they
have been convicted of any drug-related crimes before applying for aid.

Ross Wilson, legislative director of the SSDP, wrote a letter to the
U.S. Department of Education in 2004 requesting the state-by-state
breakdown of responses by students, saying that this information
would allow him to "'inform policymakers, the news media,
and private citizens about how the presence of the drug conviction
question on the FAFSA affects applications for aid in each state and
territory.'"

Wilson also included a request to waive the $4,124 fee the
Department of Education charges for the list of student responses,
which the Department of Education denied, according to a Sep. 20
letter to Wilson from the Department of Education, and the SSDP then
filed the lawsuit to obtain the fee waiver.

According to Chad Colby, spokesman for the Department of Education,
the Department did not consent to the waiver because administrators
found the request was not in the public's interest.

"The reason the department refused to grant the few waiver is
because this organization failed to demonstrate that its request was
in the public interest in that it was not likely to contribute
significantly to public understanding of the operations
or activities of the government," Colby said in an email.

Colby added that the records were "not primarily in the commercial
interest of SSDP ... the Department did not seek to charge the SSDP
the commercial rate - they assessed them at the 'other requester'
rate, which is a lesser rate." More than 175,000 students have
applied for Financial Aid but have been denied because of their
answer to the drug-conviction question on the financial-aid forms,
said Tom Angell, campaigns director of the SSDP, adding that SSDP
wants to "erase this policy from the law books" and called such laws
"ineffective."

According to Angell, this 175,000 calculation is not an accurate
projection of students who did not receive financial aid because it
does not include those who did not apply.

"The laws are intended to reduce drug abuse, but really,
it increases abuse by blocking education," he said. "It makes our
nation's drug problems worse."

Angell said the SSDP would rather see students "become productive
and move on with their lives," adding that "only convictions while
someone is a college student should cause them to lose aid."

SSDP has made significant progress as Congress recently amended the
law so that only students convicted of drug offenses while in school
and receiving aid are impacted, a change that the Department of
Education Administration supported.

Under this amendment, after a student's first conviction, they lose
financial aid for one year, after their second conviction for two
years, and after that they lose any aid indefinitely, Angell said.

Even with these changes to the act, SSDP members say they are not
satisfied until the the act is scrapped altogether.