THE DRUG WAR ON STUDENTS

Almost every day the war on drugs chalks up another casualty of tragic
nonsense from the front -- the man who dies of a heart attack when
narcotics agents break into his home by mistake, the dying cancer
patient denied a few comforting puffs of marijuana because it would
"send the wrong message," traveling missionaries mistaken for drug
dealers and shot from the sky over Peru.

It's all part of the same pattern of lunacy that attends the vaguest and
longest war America has fought since President Nixon declared it in
1972.

All sorts of rights have been compromised in the name of the war, and
with the courts' blessing, from property rights to the right of privacy.
The right to an education is next.

Student aid has been a bedrock of opportunity for college students.
Simply put, no one can be denied a college education for lack of money.
The federal government all but throws its Pell grants at needy students,
and federally guaranteed student loans are as easy to get as credit
cards and half as cheap to pay back.

But a sweeping federal education law passed in 1998 changed the rules
about student aid. Anyone convicted of a drug crime can now be denied
aid, even after taking the punishment for the crime.

Students are expected to disclose on their aid forms whether they've
ever been convicted of drug charges. Of the 9.8 million applicants for
aid last year, 9,000 admitted to having such a record and were denied
aid. But 279,000 left the question blank. They weren't audited because
the government hardly enforced the provision.

President Bush is changing that. Applicants now risk losing aid just by
leaving the question blank, and enforcement will be stepped up through
extra auditing.

It's a merciless crackdown with the worst possible motives. People go to
college to improve their lives, as positive a step as anyone can take.
It requires commitment, and, for many who've never gone that route, a
great deal of courage. For those who've previously been arrested for
whatever reason, college can be the turnaround of their life. Now the
government is singling out some of those people and telling them not to
bother.

Not the murderers, not the rapists, not the burglars and the arsonists,
not the wife beaters or the child molesters -- those remain eligible for
federal aid, no questions asked. Only the drug folks are targeted.

Talk about sending the wrong message. Any past drug conviction of any
sort, whether it's owning a bong, puffing weed at a concert or importing
heroin from Southeast Asia, and they're considered permanent prisoners
of the drug war, denied aid for at least a year and up to forever,
depending on the severity of past convictions.

America hasn't entirely given up on rehabilitation, but the emphasis is
on punishment now. But to let the government's punitive arm extend
beyond the prison walls and reach into individual lives as they attempt
rehabilitation on their own contradicts every tenet of fairness and
opportunity, to say nothing of the tenets of "compassionate
conservatism."

The policy was virtually meaningless until the Bush Administration
decided to enforce it, which has brought it -- and its absurdities --
out of the shadows. Not only does the policy deserve a quick death (a
bill in Congress may do just that), but the government that was so
intent on enforcing it should redirect its resources to notifying the
thousands of applicants who were denied aid because of it.

It's the least the government can do to contain the drug war's
casualties of folly.