WAR ON DRUGS NEEDS TO BE REEXAMINED

Recent Changes Make the Debate Relevant to Students

The death of an influential economist who advocated decriminalizing
drugs has prompted the need to revisit the United State's War on Drugs.

The recent death of famed economist Milton Friedman has prompted an
avalanche of essays about his influential monetary writings. Friedman
was indeed a driving force behind many of today's fundamental economic
policies, and his ideas deserve the laudatory nature of these
tributes. But in the rush to sanctify Friedman's fiscal faculty,
another aspect of his impressive career, of special import to
students, may be overlooked. Friedman was a vocal advocate for the
decriminalization of drugs, and his passing reminds us that the time
to re-evaluate the War on Drugs is long overdue.

Though attempts at drug prohibition have existed for decades, it was
not until President Nixon declared drug use "public enemy number one"
in 1971 that the War on Drugs as we know it began. Since then, the
federal government has poured billions of dollars into the attempted
eradication of drug use and trafficking, with mixed but disheartening
results. Drug use and accessibility have largely stayed unchanged, and
the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services acknowledges that in
the past decade, drug use has increased among nearly every age group.
The government has little to show for its 35-year investment in
fighting drugs.

Recent changes in federal financial-aid policy make the War on Drugs
especially relevant to students. The potential loss of financial aid
in the event of a drug conviction is an excessively condemnatory
action, and a dubious one considering the ethical state of other
aspects of government. Students face the prospect of a draconian
punishment for the use of substances often considered less harmful
than their legal and regulated cousins. An action of such finality can
do irreparable harm to the educational path of a student.

The government's other Wars on Nouns (poverty, crime, terrorism) have
all had mixed results. No problem has been totally eliminated, but at
least we can see some modicum of progress in each. But the War on
Drugs has been an almost total failure, with regression across the
entire spectrum of the effort.

The expected difficulty of a task should never be a reason for
dissuasion from that task, and the challenge of a goal should not
prevent all work toward that end. The War on Drugs springs from the
noble ideal of improving our nation's health and lifestyle, but the
time to heed Friedman's advice is here. The War on Drugs has failed,
and a new course is needed.