THE FOOD STAMP: WEAPON IN THE WAR ON DRUGS

In little more than a month, California launches a major experiment in the
management and control of illegal drugs. Under Proposition 36, which goes
into effect July 1, anyone convicted of simple possession will be allowed
to choose treatment instead of prison. If the offender successfully
completes treatment, he or she can petition the court to have the
conviction dismissed.

But under a punitive last-minute floor amendment written into the 1996
welfare reform act by Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, anyone convicted of a
felony drug violation will be denied food stamps and certain other federal
benefits for life. (Rapists and murderers are subject to no such penalties;
nor are welfare cheats.) That makes treatment and rehabilitation that much
tougher, both for the offender and her family.

The law allows individual states to opt out of the ban, something that 28
have done in whole or in part, but which California has not. Two years ago,
a bill carried by Republican Sen. Cathie Wright that would have ended the
prohibition was approved by the Legislature, but vetoed by Gov. Gray Davis
because, he said, "Convicted felons do not deserve the same treatment as
law-abiding citizens, especially those that manufacture, transport or
distribute drugs."

And so thousands of Californians -- among them breast-feeding women, the
old, the ill, parents of young children, many of them convicted only on
possession charges and long cured of their addiction -- are denied food
stamps and federal benefits under TANF, Temporary Aid for Needy Families
(called CalWORKs in this state). The food stamps cost the state nothing.

The federal law makes no tender distinctions between first offenders and
career drug dealers, between adolescents and adults. And while children of
drug offenders can still get their food stamps, when a parent is denied her
benefits, the children inevitably suffer as well. It's the poor, who need
the aid, who bear the brunt of the law's effects; big-time dealers don't
need food stamps.

Now a new bill, AB 767 by Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg, D-Los Angeles, is
moving through the Legislature. The bill, which narrowly passed the
Assembly in mid-May, would cover only drug offenders convicted of use or
possession who have completed a drug treatment program, who are in a
program or who are willing to participate in such a program. Drug
traffickers would still be subject to the lifetime ban.

The bill has a good chance in the Senate, but the governor has not yet
indicated whether he would sign it. Although he's famously averse to
anything linked to poverty, this is one that would serve the general
welfare, not just the individuals who would directly benefit from it.

Because AB 767 would eliminate the clumsy contradiction between help and
punishment, the imminent implementation of Proposition 36, which voters
approved last fall, makes Goldberg's bill particularly urgent. If offenders
who otherwise qualify for food stamps were not denied those benefits
precisely when they most needed them, the odds of successful treatment
would be considerably enhanced. (The Goldberg bill also would cover people
serving prison terms and all those convicted since the welfare reform law
was passed in 1996.)

It's a no-brainer. "The denial of aid," said Casey McKeever of the Western
Center on Law and Poverty, "can cause serious problems, especially mothers
of children who are attempting recovery but need economic support in the
process. Some drug treatment programs depend on public assistance to cover
[clients'] expenses."

In some cases, residential treatment centers require their patients to give
them their food stamps -- which in turn decreases the cost to the agencies,
including taxpayers, that fund those facilities. That makes the drug felony
law, as Mr. Bumble said, "a ass, a idiot," undermining with one rule the
treatment and rehabilitation that public policy otherwise so earnestly
pretends to encourage.

It's not the only such federal law. Another, passed in 1998, denies anyone
convicted of a drug offense all rights to federal student loans and grants
for at least a year and often longer. Again, no other category of crime --
robbery, murder, rape -- triggers such a penalty.

Until this year, the feds were casual about enforcement -- students who
failed to answer an application question about drug convictions, as 279,000
did last year, got their grants anyway. Now the Bush administration will
deny the loans to anyone who doesn't answer. Not surprisingly, students and
college financial aid officials are now organizing against it.

Both laws are artifacts of an era, increasingly repudiated by American
voters, when interdiction and punishment were embraced as the only
effective instruments of drug control in this country.

But in the case of the food stamp rule, the Legislature and governor have
an easy alternative: Pass AB 767. If they do, they'll send Washington yet
another signal that there are fairer and smarter ways to combat drugs.