DRUG POLICY HURTS MORE THAN HELPS, STUDENTS SAY

Students for a Sensible Drug Policy, a recently formed on-campus
group, is focusing on key issues pertaining to current drug laws both
locally and nationally.

"It's important to stress that what we're trying to do isn't simply to
grant people the legal right to get high," said Laura Eshelman, vice
president of SSDP. "Fighting the war on drugs is much more significant
than that, and it extends to so many other areas of society." SSDP, a
national grassroots activist organization created in 1998, has
chapters on college campuses nationwide, including three others in
North Carolina. The main goals of SSDP are pushing for a sensible
federal drug policy, as well as fighting back against the drug war
policies, which harm many students, according to Eshelman.

"Overall, we're trying to cultivate awareness on campus about the
long-term harm that the war on drugs inflicts on the country and how
it affects us directly or indirectly as students," Eshelman said. "It
would be ideal to get more students involved because a lot of them
already disagree with current policies, but I think they feel like
they can't do anything about them." Zachary Rosenberg, president of
the UNC Asheville chapter of SSDP, said one of the group's main goals
is to reverse a small part of the Higher Education Act. "The
organization was founded specifically to reverse a small part of the
Higher Education Act which was slipped in by Congressman Mark Souder
(R-IN) during reauthorization in 1999," Rosenberg said. "This part
says that any student receiving federal funds to go to college will
have their federal funding revoked if convicted of a drug offense.

SSDP has since expanded its scope to include all aspects of illegal
drug and student interaction, and many outside that relationship."
There are many students who feel the negative effects of this law,
according to Eshelman.

"Over 200,000 students in the United States have been denied federal
aid for school because of drug convictions," Eshelman said. "That can
be for anything from cocaine possession to a mere gram of pot, but
doesn't apply to convictions for any violent crimes." SSDP has
criticized the war on drugs, a series of measures enacted by the
United States Senate to stop illegal drug trade, as being unfair and
ineffective.

"The war on drugs is a destructive, unwinnable campaign that hurts
much more than it helps," Rosenberg said. "To the best of my
knowledge, no society has ever been able to stop the production and
consumption of drugs, least of all liberal democracies. Locking up
people for drug use does not stop people from using drugs.

It is not an effective deterrent." In 2005, there were an estimated
1,846,400 arrests for drug abuse violations in the United States,
according to information from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's
Uniform Crime Reports. This number has been on the rise since 1980,
according to the study.

The report also showed that more than 80 percent of drug law violation
arrests were for possession, and since 1996 the number of arrests
involving marijuana exceeded that for other types of drugs.

"At the moment, the United States has more prisoners in custody than
any other nation on Earth, and the majority of them are nonviolent
drug offenders," Rosenberg said.

"We cannot stop drugs from being manufactured or coming into the
country, there's just too much money in it, and the chances of
interception are very low. So, the best approach we could take to
drugs is to minimize the harm they do to the users and minimize
violence from the dealers and manufacturers." SSDP is open to all
students on campus, according to Eshelman and Rosenberg. The group
meets every Tuesday at 5 p.m. in the Highsmith dining area. "I hear
people complaining about anti-drug laws all the time, but few people
actually want to get involved because they're either afraid or lazy,
and that's frustrating to me," Eshelman said. "I know a lot of good,
capable students who have been kicked out of the residence halls or
expelled from the university because they've been caught with marijuana.

This is preposterous. Not only does the student suffer, but the
university loses someone who up until then contributed to the school's
academic environment." The group's faculty sponsor is Mark Gibney,
political science professor. Gibney said he agrees with SDS that the
current drug laws are ineffective. "U.S. drug policy is insane,"
Gibney said. "I don't think it is possible to devise a system that is
more racist, more expensive and more socially counter-productive than
the one that we have." SSDP is the first group of its kind at UNC
Asheville, according to Eshelman. Although the group was recently
created, the bake sale it sponsored last week raised awareness for the
group and its cause.

"This is a productive group, and one that I would be interested in
joining," said Zach Shitama, senior student. "UNC Asheville should
have more political student groups that take a stand." The
organization is an effective grassroots campaign, not an excuse for
drug users to convene, according to Eshelman.

"I do think a lot of people are feluctant to trust the group because
they might see it as a 'drug club,' or a meeting ground for stoners,"
Eshelman said. "Like other organizations, SSDP neither advocates nor
condemns drug use itself.

We're condemning the policies regarding it, and we're advocating
change."