THE DRUG WAR Students press fight on punitive act BY IAN DONNIS

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 realize they’re going after me," he recalls thinking. "I’m a high school and now the drug war is [potentially] targeting me."

URI and Brown student 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 exists." 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.