TEEN'S EFFORTS TO LEGALIZE MARIJUANA STIR THE POT

WASHINGTON - Scarlett Swerdlow is a debating legend. Not only because she's
won 49 competitions in a row - "Nobody will ever do that again," says her
debate coach, Rusty McCrady - but because her last topic, legalizing
marijuana, has turned into a crusade.

And she even earned high school credit for it.

Community service requirements are still in their formative years, with
school districts mandating various number of hours before graduation.
Swerdlow pushed the limits of approved activities by obtaining special
signatures so she could volunteer to legalize marijuana.

In the coming school year, her activity raises questions that will continue
to rankle administrators deciding what should be allowed and what
shouldn't. Should students receive school credit volunteering for
organizations known to protest through flag-burning demonstrations? For gay
outreach organizations? For a white supremacy group? Some would argue that
schools shouldn't censor students' political opinions; others would say
schools shouldn't support one side or the other on controversial issues.

Three years of debating experience couldn't prepare Swerdlow, a soft-spoken
18-year-old, for the subject she chose for her senior year at Walter
Johnson High School in suburban Bethesda, Md.

Last fall, as Swerdlow and McCrady looked through newspapers for her final
debate topic, articles on medical marijuana caught their attention. After a
quick Internet search, they decided there was enough material to make a
substantive case for legalizing the drug. Swerdlow never expected judges to
deduct points because of her subject.

But at the competition, one judge told her it was an "inappropriate topic"
for a high school debate and held it against her in the scoring. Another
judge liked her performance so much that she had enough points to continue
to the final round, where she won first place. But for Swerdlow, it was the
principle that mattered.

"It wasn't until the judges said it was inappropriate that I felt really
angry and realized firsthand that people have a bias," she says.

She offered to volunteer after school for one of the organizations that
helped her prepare for her debate, the Marijuana Policy Project, which
lobbies for legalization. "I thought volunteering would be a way to channel
my anger, to do something productive with it," she explains.

Before beginning her debate research, she says, she never questioned the
illegality of the drug, assuming "it must be illegal for a reason."

Within a few months, however, Swerdlow learned more about the effects of
prohibiting marijuana and became an advocate of legalization. While she
doesn't know anyone personally who has been hurt by the ban, she says, she
doesn't think it's right that students can lose their federal loans after
getting caught with marijuana, and that even medical marijuana is illegal
in most states.

After almost a year of research, she has whittled down her beliefs:
regulation, but not incarceration. The government should monitor marijuana,
she says, as it monitors alcohol and tobacco, with a minimum age
requirement (18), penalties for driving under the influence (losing your
license) and a fine for underage smoking (and maybe parent notification).

"If there were regulations, fewer minors would be able to get access to
marijuana," she says. The Marijuana Policy Project doesn't encourage
marijuana use, she adds.

She wants the current laws to be changed gradually to prevent legal
confusion and drug abuse. Perhaps adults should be allowed to grow the drug
in their homes before the organization of large-scale distribution, she
explains.

Principal Frank Stetson defends Johnson High School's decision to approve
volunteer work at MPP.

"We're not in the position of censoring ideas that students have," he says.
"It bothers me (that) ... this is considered an illegal activity, but this
organization is not illegal, and all sorts of groups throughout this
nation's history have lobbied against illegal things."

But usually they haven't received school credit for it.

Swerdlow's parents, now divorced, say they're proud of their daughter.
They've seen her lobby for other causes before, including gay rights and
feminism. Her mother, a social worker, taught her compassion, she says, and
her father, a telecommunications engineer, taught her to be critical, which
led her to question the current drug laws.

Her father's house has hosted many late-night discussions between Swerdlow
and Keely Owens, a close friend who joined her at MPP last spring.

Working at MPP enhanced their visibility at school. As other students heard
about their volunteer work, Swerdlow and Owens became mini-celebrities.

But not everyone understood. "Some people were like, 'Whoa, dude, can I
volunteer, too? Will they give me weed?' I just said, 'Go for it. You'll be
stuffing envelopes for 10 minutes, and you'll be outta there,' " Owens recalls.

Some encouraging students were "stoners," Swerdlow says, known for smoking
pot. She doesn't want to say if she fits into that category.

"Any way I answer that question, people would make a generalization about
me." She says her own drug habits don't matter, anyway. "This was never
about me wanting to get high, but about educating people."

Swerdlow didn't even show up at the marijuana legalization protest near the
Mall on the Fourth of July. "People think they're being active" by
protesting, she says, "but what's noble about MPP is that we're going in
every day to work on this."

Swerdlow has begun planning to organize a chapter of Students for Sensible
Drug Policy as a freshman this fall at the University of California at
Berkeley. She wants to focus on legalizing marijuana rather than on gay
rights or feminism because it is, she says, "the most pressing issue in the
U.S. right now. People are going to jail. ... No one is going to jail
because they're a woman."