WHY ABANDON PRECIOUS VALUES FOR ANTI-DRUG PLAN THAT DOESN'T
WORK?

Count among the casualties of the obsessive drug war many of the
values we're supposed to cherish as Americans.

Sacrificed most recently are the principles of redemption and
presumed innocence.

Over spring break, the Bush administration announced it would
actively enforce a mostly ignored federal law that denies college
financial aid to students with drug convictions. Passed in 1998, the
original intent of the law was to cut off federal support to active
drug users. But the final version also denied aid to students
with past drug convictions.

Never mind if it was a one-time mistake. Never mind if
they've straightened themselves out. Never mind that they've done
their time, paid their fine.

The law classifies drug offenders as a special class of
criminal, far more heinous than any other criminals.

Aid is not denied to those with a conviction for murder. Or
rape. Or child molesting. Or drunk driving. It singles out only those
with drug offenses. That George W. Bush would tell students
who have made mistakes with drugs that there's no second chance is
curious. By his own account, he was a drunken failure until he was 40.
And yet he turned his life around, to say the least. He should be the
last person to throw a roadblock in front of young people trying to
turn around theirs. Despite a lack of evidence that harsher
penalties make any dent in narcotics use, especially among the young,
the drug-obsessed moralists in Bush's administration insist enforcing
this punitive policy will keep students away from dope. It won't. But
it might keep them away from college.

On another front, Americans got a close-up look last week at just how
far our government will go to stem the flow of drugs. A Peruvian Air
Force jet, assisted by U.S. operatives, shot down a small plane
carrying Michigan
missionaries. Veronica Bowers of Muskegon and her seven-month-old
daughter, Charity, were killed.

CIA-hired mercenaries routinely help Peru target airplanes
suspected of carrying cocaine. Since 1994, 30 have been shot down. Who
knows how many of those planes carried innocents like the Bowers?
But even if all the planes were involved in the drug trade,
how do we feel about the United States participating in a program that
metes out capital punishment on the mere suspicion of a crime? Would
we tolerate such a shoot-first, convict-later policy within our own
borders? The Peru project reportedly has decreased the flow
of coke from that country. But that is replaced by supplies from
Colombia and Ecuador. We're preparing to expand our military
action against drug trafficking to Colombia, at a cost of billions,
and may leap frog to other countries.

Maybe we'll succeed in reducing the cocaine supply. But those
determined to get high will find other drugs, as witnessed by the
explosive popularity of the prescription painkiller Oxycotin, as well
as Ecstasy, the bathtub gin of narcotics.

We can stubbornly insist on persecuting drug users. And we
can continue to shoot down planes with no regard to due process.
But those tactics don't work. Unless we're just hell bent on
wasting time, money and lives, we should find something that will.