HYPOCRISY ON PUNISHING DRUG USE

Although it is encouraging that the FBI is reducing its discrimination
against job applicants who have used marijuana ["FBI Bows to Modern
Realities, Eases Rules on Past Drug Use," news story, Aug. 7], the
change highlights the hypocrisy in the war on drugs.

While the federal government is allowing college-educated people with
youthful indiscretions in their pasts to apply to the nation's top law
enforcement agency, it is denying school loans, food stamps and public
housing to hundreds of thousands of lower-income people with youthful
indiscretions in their pasts. And there's the racial divide. Law
enforcement routinely targets black communities for drug arrests, even
though blacks and whites use drugs at roughly the same rates.

While white drug users go on to work at the FBI, blacks go to
jail.

Bill Piper

Director of National Affairs

Drug Policy Alliance

Washington