AN ANTIDRUG MISFIRE

Laws sometimes take on unfortunate lives of their own - particularly
vaguely written ones. That has certainly been the case with a law passed in
1998. Its purpose: to keep college students who use or deal in drugs from
getting federal loans.

The law is triggered only when a student applying for college aid owns up
to any convictions for possessing or selling an illegal drug.

The Clinton administration lightly enforced this law. For a while, it cut
off only those honest enough to answer yes. The hundreds of thousands of
loan applicants who left that box blank weren't penalized. Later, the
administration added a line telling applicants not to leave the space blank.

Enter the Bush administration, which has logically enough decided to assume
that a blank answer to that question means yes, and hence a probable denial
of aid.

But the logic in all this is slippery at best. The author of the law, Rep.
Mark Souder (R) of Indiana, says he never intended the cutoff to apply to
new applicants for aid who may have had a past drug conviction. He says he
believes that people must have a chance to redeem themselves and get a
fresh start. He wants to revise the law to make it clear that it was meant
to apply only to students currently getting aid.

But wouldn't the redemptive effect of education apply just as much to them,
even if they are among the estimated one-third of college students who
occasionally smoke marijuana?

Consider also that no other kind of past conviction, no matter how serious,
carries a similar cutoff of aid?

This law is quite frankly a misfire in the drug war. It should be repealed,
not altered.