ARREST RAPISTS, NOT MARIJUANA SMOKERS

As a graduate and former student body president of Penn State University, I
wasn't surprised to see the U.S. Department of Education's recent finding
that more students were arrested in 2000 for drug offenses at Penn State
than at any other college or university in the country.

Penn State is not alone in its foolishness, however. The report shows that
11,276 campus drug arrests were made in 2000, a 10 percent increase from
1999. And, according to the school officials cited in an article in the
Chronicle of Higher Education Jan. 23, most of those arrests were for
marijuana.

At Penn State and many other schools, the real crime problem is rape and
property crimes. While police and resident advisers are sniffing under
students' doors for the occasional marijuana smoker, nearly 4,000 women
were raped on campus property in 2000. Worse yet, students with drug
convictions automatically lose their federal financial aid, while rapists,
murderers and other terrors to society never lose their eligibility to
attend college.

Until rape is completely eliminated and every violent predator is tracked
down and arrested, the police on and off campus must share in the blame for
these crimes if they continue wasting time arresting nonviolent marijuana
users.

There continue to be more than 646,000 marijuana possession arrests every
year in the United States, as the Federal Bureau of Investigation reports.
Please help end the war on marijuana users by joining our cause at www.mpp.org.

Robert D. Kampia, Executive Director, Marijuana Policy Project Washington, D.C.