STUDENTS PRESS FIGHT ON PUNITIVE ACT

With the so-called global war on terror dominating public attention,
another international battle - the war on drugs - often seems overlooked by
comparison. Student activists nonetheless used the recent College
Convention, a gathering in Manchester, New Hampshire, to press Democratic
presidential candidates to repeal the Higher Education Act, a law that
denies federal aid to students with a drug conviction on their record.

Tom Angell, a University of Rhode Island senior active with Students for
Sensible Drug Policy (www.ssdp.org), reports that Wesley Clark, Howard
Dean, Joseph Lieberman, and Dennis Kucinich backed HEA repeal.

John Kerry supports a partial repeal of the measure, and John Edwards
declined to take a stance.

According to a news release by SSDP, which cosponsored the College
Convention, Dean called the HEA a "dumb idea," adding, "If you want people
to go college, you don't prevent them because they have a drug conviction.
There's no possible sense in doing that."

About 300 students from around the country, mostly from New England,
attended the College Convention, held January 6-10, to discuss progressive
issues.

Although the drug war may have faded into the background, Angell, 21, notes
that drug policy reform has become a more mainstream issue in recent years.

After starting with just a few backers, for example, SSDP has grown to
consist of more than 200 high school and college chapters.

The HEA, created in 1998, meanwhile, has resulted in the denial of
financial aid for more than 124,000 students, says SSDP. The act is up for
reauthorization this year, and repeal has the local support of the URI
faculty senate and university president Robert Carothers, Angell says.

Angell, a Warwick native, says he grew concerned about drug policy as a
high school student, concluding that the drug war had not only failed, but
gone too far in adversely affecting people's lives. "Once I learned they
were trying to keep students out of school, I realized they're going after
me," he recalls thinking. "I'm a high school student and now the drug war
is [potentially] targeting me."

URI and Brown students played a prank on former drug czar Bill Bennett
during the College Convention, distributing clear plastic cups with labels
reading, "URINE SAMPLE: Tonight's speaker, William Bennett - former drug
czar and secretary of education - respectfully requests your participation
to ensure a drug-free audience and the safety of all attendees. Please
deposit your completed sample in one of the conveniently located
receptacles near the room's exits." Angell reports, "He said, 'Please hold
your applause until the end. In fact, please hold everything.' He was
definitely uncomfortable during the whole thing."

Prospects for change at the national level remain uncertain, since even
Democrats like Bill Clinton have enthusiastically backed the status quo on
drug policy.

Although Kucinich might bring a quick end to the drug war, he's unlikely to
get the Democratic nomination. Dean, at least, told the College Convention
that he'd back a drug czar with a health-care, rather than a military,
background.

Meanwhile, a study commissioned by the National Institute on Drug Abuse
found that the multi-million dollar advertising effort of the White House
anti-drug office has had little effect in swaying the views of American
teenagers, adage.com recently reported.

The Web site noted that the White House Office of National Drug Control
Policy (ONDCP) spends in the neighborhood of $150 million a year on
advertising. The NIDA report, meanwhile, indicates that ONDCP's ad
campaigns had a "favorable effect" on parents, but not on children, whose
illicit drug use is the target of the ads.