A LOOK AT A WAR WE CONTINUE TO LOSE

The war on drugs has long been about heavy bombing rather than
thoughtful prevention.

Jails and prisons fill up due to mandatory sentencing laws. U.S.
officials tell poor farmers in other countries that they have to
destroy their cash crop because if they don't it will eventually go
up the noses of bored Americans.

And the national drug appetite continues to grow and continues to
demand more and more.

I remember once sitting in a college auditorium and listening to the
petite Nancy Reagan bringing her "Just Say No" message to students
who probably had done more research on the subject than she had.

The first lady presented a scene of lightweight good intentions
tossed at a heavy, ugly, far reaching problem.

One of the truly hideous and self-defeating pieces of collateral
damage inflicted by the war on drugs is the federal law that cuts off
college financial aid to anyone convicted of drug offenses. Critics
point out that the law simply denies students the very thing that
would give them reason not to continue drug use -- and that other
more serious crimes do not carry the same education penalty.

The law has been modified but not eliminated. It can still get in the
way of an education.

"We share the simple belief that that if you take away someone's
ability to gain an education, that person is more likely to turn
toward drug use," says Brown University senior Matthew Palevsky. "We
feel as members of Students For Sensible Drug Policy that we have to
announce that this war, fought in our name, is leading to more crime
and drug abuse."

He is one of the organizers of a regional conference that begins
today at Brown and continues through the weekend. It is called
"Confronting the Drug War: Envisioning Alternatives." The topics
include "Building an Antiracist Movement" and "What If? A World
Without the Drug War."

The members of the Brown chapter of SSDP say they want students to be
better "engagers," to get beyond the campus and deal with the things
that affect life down the hill and in the community.

There is the Drug Court, where they are finding that alternatives to
jail time are often thwarted by the lack of beds in treatment
centers. There is the absence of halfway houses for people coming out
of prison. There is medical marijuana.

But this weekend it is the war on drugs they are looking at. It is
something that colors almost everything else they do. They see
reasons to change drug policy on a depressingly regular basis.

The three-day regional conference will take place in McMillan Hall on
Thayer Street. For information, check www.ssdp.org/northeast.

The conference begins today at 5 when former Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee
discusses "Politics of the Drug War."

Chafee, who teaches a noncredit course at Brown, calls the whole
issue of drug policy and its reform "politically hazardous." He said
that as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and
chairman of its Western Hemisphere subcommittee, oversight of
narcotics was one of his main concerns.

Chafee visited the "growing regions" where the raw products of
illegal drugs are produced. He said that the standard U.S. response
has been "interdiction, eradication and crop substitution."

But he says that coca growers are becoming a political force in some
countries and political candidates who support them are getting elected.

"Sadly, we've had a lack of success with our efforts so far," he said.