DRUG POLICY CONFERENCE SPARKS NEW TACTICS, PLANS

Campus Students for Sensible Drug Policy activists said they feel
reinvigorated in their fight for campus and national drug policy
reform after this weekend's largely successful conference, where
members from more than 100 sister chapters across the country, the
United Kingdom, Canada and Australia gathered to share tips and
success stories.

Drug policy activists said they will discuss and improve the campus
chapter's battles to implement a Good Samaritan Policy and equalize
punishments for marijuana and alcohol violations.

"We're trying a couple different strategies, one of which would
involve a coalition of student groups, [Student Government
Association] members and members of different boards like the student
conduct committee [of the University Senate]," said chapter president
Amanda Simmons. "When we do push this through, we want to have all
these people on board."

In 2006, the group managed to push a bill that would make marijuana
violations on par with alcohol offenses through the SGA and the
Residence Halls Association before it was halted by university officials.

"The whole conference gave me a very renewing feeling, because it can
get depressing to be involved in this cause when you come up against
an administration like ours," said SSDP member Dave Shaughnessy.

Senior mathematics and philosophy major Edward Spriggs said it was
encouraging to learn about legislative successes in Massachusetts,
where possession of one ounce or less of marijuana was recently decriminalized.

"While we're over here trying to get the Good Samaritan Policy
enacted, which is something we really care about and think would be
beneficial, and people just don't listen, it was nice to hear some
good news," he said.

Spriggs said the lobbying training on Friday was the most valuable
and enjoyable part of the conference. The Marijuana Policy Project's
Aaron Houston, the only marijuana reform lobbyist on Capitol Hill,
instructed conference-goers before sending them out in groups
according to district. Spriggs and another SSDP member spoke with
Rep. Donna Edwards' (D-Md.) staffers, whom he said were very
receptive to the need for changing disparities in crack and powder
cocaine sentencing.

"Unfortunately, the staffer at Sen. [Barbara] Mikulski's office
literally flinched when my friend, Vice President Irina Alexander,
said the word 'crack,'" Spriggs said. "You can't win 'em all."

SSDP members would ultimately like drug abuse to be treated as a
public health issue instead of as a criminal matter. Simmons said she
saw the importance of her activism when almost every hand in the
packed Grand Ballroom went up for having been incarcerated, or
knowing someone who had, for victimless drug crimes.

"It was depressing, but uniting to know that we're all in this
together," she said.