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?