STUDENTS, DRUGS, AND A LAW OF INTENDED CONSEQUENCES

A few weeks before Marisa Garcia started her first semester of
college in 2000, a cop found a pipe with marijuana residue in her
car. The pipe was hers, so she fessed up, went to court, paid her
fine, and thought the case was closed.

Soon after, Garcia, the daughter of a single mother with three other
college-age children, lost the financial aid she'd been counting on
to cover her tuition costs at Cal State Fullerton. She called her
school and found out it was because of the drug charge: The Higher
Education Act makes students with a drug conviction ineligible for
financial aid. Garcia had never heard of the law before.

She's not alone in her predicament. A study by the reform group
Students for Sensible Drug Policy, released April 17, found that
more than 180,000 students have lost or been denied financial aid
under this law since it went into effect in 2000. California has had
the highest number of students affected: a startling 31,000. The
group hopes the overall numbers will spur Congress to repeal the law.

The law is intended to be a deterrent to drug use, but critics
question its effectiveness. "Most people don't find out about it
until it's too late," Tom Angell, campaign director for SSDP, said.
"If kids are thinking about using drugs, they're supposed to say,
'No, I could lose my aid.' But not a lot of people know about it
until they come across it on their financial aid form."

Since Garcia lost her aid, the act has been amended to apply only to
students who get busted while receiving financial assistance. But
that doesn't fully address the concerns of its critics, who see it
as counterproductive.

"[The law] affects the very students whom the Higher Education Act
was intended to assist in the first place when it was passed in
1965: the students from low- and middle-income families, the ones
who cannot afford college tuition on their own," Angell said. "These
are the people who, when they get a conviction and lose their
financial aid, are forced to drop out."

Critics also contend that those punished for using drugs shouldn't
be penalized a second time for that same crime. "If you break the
law, there is a system of justice that is designed to deal with
you," said Tom Kaley, spokesperson for Rep. George Miller, the
senior Democrat on the House Education Committee, who supports the
repeal of the law. "But then to have the Department of Education add
another punch on top of that sounds a lot like double jeopardy."

That issue and others prompted the SSDP and the American Civil
Liberties Union to file a federal class-action lawsuit March 22
seeking to overturn the law. That suit, in combination with the
study, seeks to highlight how damaging the law has been.

"Now all members of Congress know exactly how many of their own
constituents are devastated by the policy," Angell said. "They're
not going to be able to keep ignoring it year after year while tens
of thousands of students lose financial aid. They're going to have
to do something about it." (Hunter Jackson)

www.ssdp.org/lawsuit