GOVERNMENT NEEDS TO GIVE DRUG CONVICTS A SHOT AT COLLEGE EDUCATION AID

February is fill-out-the-forms month if you're the parent of a
college-bound child.

Along with page after page of high school graduation stuff -- orders
for caps and gowns, announcements, senior pictures, yearbooks -- there
is also a stack of college applications and scholarship appeals to
wade through.

The most fun is the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or
FAFSA. It is about 1,000 pages long and asks a whole lot of probing
questions about the student, the student's nonexistent spouse and the
finances of the student's parents. You'd think FAFSA is really a front
for the Internal Revenue Service. My father, who had the distrust of
government that comes with being a moonshiner's grandson, spent all of
two minutes with a similar form of mine before crumpling it because,
"they ask too many personal questions."

Nearly everyone fills out a financial aid form, even though the
chances of anyone actually getting financial aid are slimmer than an
Olympic ski jumper.

This week, my son and I filled out his form. Not much has changed over
the years. The form still demands an accounting of assets, real and
perceived.

Except for Line 35, which carries the bold admonishment: "DO NOT LEAVE
BLANK." This turns out to be the most important question on the form:
"Have you ever been convicted of possessing or selling illegal drugs?"

If you answer "Yes," getting financial help with college becomes even
more of a longshot.

You may think that's fair, given the damage drugs wreak on the culture
and economy. If you make bad choices with drugs, perhaps you should be
disqualified from student aid.

But what if you commit murder? The form doesn't ask about that. Nor
does it inquire whether the student has ever been convicted of a sex
offense, drunk driving, armed robbery, treason or even terrorism.

The only concern is keeping druggies from going to college on the
government's dime. All other criminals, line up.

Drugs are bad. But so is murder, rape, public corruption, burglary and
any number of other misdeeds. And yet we keep drug offenses on a
special criminal shelf, higher than all other offenses. Most of the
recent anti-terrorism measures passed by Congress and the Legislature
contain provisions allowing them also to be applied in the drug war,
but not for other crimes.

Officially, drugs are Public Enemy No. 1. But images in the popular
culture suggest otherwise. Celebrity boomers show up on talk shows
giggling about their drug-dazed days. Popular teen movies would be
incomplete without scenes of no-consequence drug use. On a recent
episode of HBO's smash hit Sex and the City, an old-enough-to-know-
better character takes ecstasy as casually as she would take a martini
or a lover -- the same week the federal government launched a major
anti-ecstasy campaign.

The drug warriors can't win against this countercurrent, at least not
with punitive weapons like closing college doors to past drug offenders.

Some think drug use should be treated as a crime; others view it as a
disease.

But can anyone really defend treating it as so much of a crime that it
denies the offender the chance at the rehabilitative benefits of an
education?