LISTEN TO WHAT JELLO BIAFRA SAYS

I respond to the Daily Mail's Jan. 1 editorial, "College: Those who
sell drugs should not get federal aid."

The Drug Enforcement Agency criticizes ethnic cleansing around the
world from Hitler to Milosevic but practices it daily with its drug
war. In the October 1999 edition of High Times, Jello Biafra says
that DEAland's drug war is ethnic cleansing American style.

If your readers doubt this, they should ask themselves why white drug
users well outnumber non-white drug users but a majority of those
dying, doing time, losing voting rights and losing college aid for
non-violent drug crimes are people of color.

African-Americans make up 12 percent of the population but it is
estimated that they make up 38 percent of those arrested for drug
offenses and 58 percent of those convicted of drug offenses.

It seems the government has no problem giving college aid to
convicted rapists and murderers but not to a convicted possessor of
one joint. Now, to use a favorite ploy of the paranoid,
propaganda-peddling prohibitionists: What kind of message are we
sending to the children?

Maybe the corrupt politicians and media are required to adhere to the
party line of prohibition because law enforcement, customs, the
prison and military industrial complex, the drug testing industry,
the "drug treatment" industry, the INS, the CIA, the FBI, the DEA,
the politicians themselves et al can't live without the budget
justification, not to mention the invisible profits, bribery,
corruption and forfeiture benefits that prohibition affords them.

The drug war also promotes, justifies and perpetuates racist
enforcement policies and is diminishing many freedoms and liberties
that are supposed to be inalienable according to the constitution and
bill of rights.

Myron Von Hollingsworth
Fort Worth, Texas

FORMER DRUG USERS NEED AID FOR COLLEGE

I must take issue with your Jan. 1 editorial concerning the 1998
Higher Education Act.

Contrary to your claim, the law's ban on federal student aid was in
no way targeted solely at dealers; it clearly applies to anyone
convicted of any drug-related offense, including simple possession.

Considering that we arrest some 650,000 Americans each year just for
simple possession of marijuana, the distinction is a crucial one.

Note that convicted thieves, murderers, and rapists face no ban on
student aid - - only drug offenders are targeted. Users and abusers
of more dangerous legal drugs, like alcohol and tobacco, are also
exempted from the ban.

The Higher Education Act is so badly flawed that even Rep. Mark
Souder, R- Ind., outspoken drug warrior and author of the law, is
fighting hard to change it.

The ban merely discriminates against poorer students who need the aid
most. After all, upper-class drug users needn't worry about losing
financial aid -- and it denies them an important opportunity to put
their lives back together after a run-in with America's overzealous
morality police.

Keith Sanders
Oakland, Calif.