FREEDOM FIGHTER OF THE YEAR: SHAWN HELLER

Shawn Heller, national director of Students for Sensible Drug Policy,
is disgusted with the entire War on Drugs. "Drug laws as a whole are
not only un-American, they violate the essence of the Constitution.
Marijuana certainly shouldn't be Schedule I, but the idea that
Schedule I even exists, that the Department of Justice is determining
what the legal status is for possessing a plant or chemical either in
your body or on your person, this is just a crazy idea."

Heller co-founded SSDP in 1998, while he was studying political
science and criminal justice at George Washington University in
Washington. He'd come there in 1997, after graduating from the
Maritime Academy of Science and Technology in his hometown of Miami.
In his first year at GWU, Heller worked in the White House Office of
Political Affairs and for the Clinton advance team, writing weekly
political and trip briefs for the President on over 30 different states.

"Towards the end of working at the White House and over that following
summer, I spent my time researching drug policy pretty much day and
night," says Heller, who that fall was an intern with the reform
organization DRCNet and a volunteer for the DC Initiative 59
medical-marijuana campaign. "For me, never having been a drug user or
even considered using drugs, looking at the situation from a real
policy-focus angle, I had always felt that the War on Drugs was wrong.
When I found out that SSDP wasn't going to be only a marijuana-focused
organization, but still would deal with marijuana policy, I felt it a
perfect fit for what I was looking for."

Since Heller, Chris Lotlikar and other student activists founded SSDP
at five schools in 1998, the organization has grown to include over
200 chapters nationwide. New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson joined its board
of advisors in 1999. That November, SSDP had their first national
conference, and the next year Heller was elected national director.
One of the group's main issues has been the Higher Education Act, the
1998 law that bans federal loans to students convicted of drug
charges-but not of rape or murder. And last June 6, he and some
friends locked themselves to the front doors of the Department of
Justice, demanding an end to the war on medical marijuana.

"I definitely feel that little steps are important, that small
victories here and there are definitely helpful, and spur growth of
the movement," he says. "The only way we're going to end the War on
Drugs is for our movement to increase, for the things that we do to
get increased attention and notoriety, increased publicity, increased
awareness and discussion so that the discussions are actually
happening versus being laughed at. We want to take it to the next
step, where most everyone is saying 'no', this is wrong and it needs
to end."