It would seem that only the fanatics, the kind of people whose response to failure is to close their eyes, plug their ears and push on with still more gusto, would remain enthusiastic warriors in the war on drugs at this point.

As if denying medicinal marijuana to cancer patients wasn't enough, we now have an Associated Press story about thousands of applicants being turned down for college aid because of past drug offenses.

First some background: In 1998, as part of our broader campaign against the use of illicit substances, U.S. Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., successfully sponsored legislation that would deny federal financial aid for college for one year to recipients convicted of drug possession.

Second offenses, or a first drug-sale conviction, would make the offender ineligible for such aid for the next two years.

As bad as the logic of such a law might be, things got worse when the incoming Bush administration, beholden to social conservatives intent upon restoring their conception of "traditional morality," decided to interpret the law as meaning that anyone with any kind of previous drug conviction, however minor, and regardless of circumstances, be judged ineligible for college financial aid.

The end result is that over 40,000--43,436, to be exact--college students or would-be college students are being denied such financial aid for the current academic year because of prior drug convictions.

How many of these young people have been forced to abandon their dream of a college education altogether we don't know, but one also assumes that the law has hit those on the lower end of the financial ladder with the fewest alternative sources of funding, i.e. the poor, the hardest.

Virtually nobody in Congress, including the law's sponsor, wanted this to happen, as the original idea was to simply use the threat of lost financial aid as a means of deterring drug use among current aid recipients. But then, one of nature's more immutable laws is that all laws have unintended consequences, especially when imprecisely written and motivated by a crusading mentality deaf to common sense.

One would like to believe that having violated one of our country's many and inconsistent drug laws would have little bearing on one's prospects of acquiring a loan for college, or, better yet, that we might even wish to encourage past drug offenders, as part of the broader concept called rehabilitation, to attempt to improve their lives and become more productive citizens by attending college.

Going further, one would think that denying someone financial aid because of a past drug conviction represents an unfair form of double punishment, one that would make about as much sense as denying people with criminal records the opportunity to subsequently find gainful employment or to obtain mortgage loans. But the law denying college aid to drug offenders is still there, and a Bush administration loathe to risk the wrath of anti-drug social conservatives appears unwilling to support proposals in Congress to reform it in a more lenient direction.

To criticize the war on drugs isn't, of course, to endorse drug use in any way. It simply suggests that it should be philosophically repugnant in a free society to criminalize the voluntary ingestion of substances which are, more often than not, and when used in moderation, no more harmful than a bottle of Miller Lite. And also logically ludicrous to then spend scarce law enforcement resources to arrest and possibly ruin the lives of those who violate such laws.

As columnist Steven Chapman recently put it, "We don't send cops out to arrest alcoholics because they abuse liquor; or imprison smokers because they have a tobacco habit. Why, then, is the use of marijuana or cocaine a law enforcement matter?"

If nothing else, Sept. 11 should have taught us that freedom has real enemies and that college kids sitting in their dorm room sharing a joint and listening to Pink Floyd aren't remotely among them.

As things stand, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the war on drugs has become a greater threat to our lives and freedoms than even the most rampant and irresponsible drug use could ever be.

Bradley R. Gitz

Bradley R. Gitz teaches politics at Lyon College
at Batesville.

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette 1/13/2002