The major drug reform organizations are jumping on the Oregonian’s HEA editorial, too:

An editorial in this morning’s Oregonian got it wrong, and ignored key arguments and organizations to be able to do so. Oregon is an important state right now in DRCNet’s top legislative effort — the campaign to repeal the federal ban on financial aid for students with drug convictions — and we need your help to make a strong showing in response.

What’s going on is that recently a committee in the US House of Representatives voted to scale back, but not repeal, a law that takes financial aid away from students because of drug convictions. Our current focus in the campaign to repeal the law instead is the Senate, where the climate seems more favorable than in the House. One of your Senators, Gordon Smith (R-OR), stated a few months ago after being asked by a DRCNet member that he believes the law should be repealed, but has yet to act. If we can persuade him to serve as an original cosponsor of a bipartisan Senate repeal bill (we have Democratic sponsors lined up), and if we can make that happen soon, there’s a good chance our allies in the Senate could leverage that to get repeal included in the reauthorizing legislation of the Higher Education Act itself, the major educational legislation that deals with financial aid programs as a whole and which includes the HEA drug provision.

This morning’s Oregonian editorial came out instead in support of the partial reform to the law. But to justify doing so, it omitted key arguments that had been presented to them.

• One of the problems with the law is that it extends the racial discrimination that is endemic in drug enforcement into the realm of higher education. The editorial mentioned the Oregon Student Association and the ACLU of Oregon — students and civil libertarians — as opponents of the law, but not the Urban League of Portland or the Oregon Students of Color Coalition.
• The editorial touts the fact that one’s aid eligibility can be restored if one completes a drug treatment program, but fails to mention that treatment programs often cost more than tuition itself and are inaccessible to many low-income people who are the ones who most need financial aid for school. Also, many people with drug convictions don’t have drug addiction problems and can be denied admission to treatment programs for that reason.
• The editorial says that “Those caught using or selling should be prepared to face the consequences,” but omits the fact that the same people have already gone through the criminal justice system and suffered whatever consequences the judge saw fit — which could already have included revocation of financial aid benefits, as judges already had that power before the law was enacted — but are now punished a second time regardless of what their judge thinks.
• The editorial points out, correctly, that there is widespread misunderstanding of the law and that many people are deterred from applying because they wrongly believe that their one or two drug convictions from long ago still make them ineligible for aid. While this is an important message to get out — we don’t want people who could have gotten aid not applying for it by mistake — the way it was written is inaccurate. Though one drug conviction from more than two years ago does not make someone permanently ineligible now, two sales convictions or three possessions does. Under the compromise form of the law, an individual who is addicted at age 19 while in school, for example, and who gets multiple convictions as a result of it, would still be ineligible for aid at age 50 or 60, no matter what things he or she has done in life since then.

The campaign to repeal the HEA drug provision is the only effort that currently has a chance to fully repeal a federal drug law, something that hasn’t happened since the Boggs Laws (earlier mandatory minimum sentences) were repealed in 1970. We need your help in Oregon today! Please send a letter to the editor to the Oregonian — click here to read the editorial online. (You’ll need to register first — e-mail us and we’ll send you a copy directly if you’d rather not register.) Letters should be limited to no more than 150 words, should include your full address and daytime phone number (for verification purposes), and can by e-mail to [email protected], via fax to (503) 294-4193, or to: Letters to the Editor, The Oregonian, 1320 SW Broadway, Portland, OR 97201. Please send us a copy of your letter — even if they don’t wind up printing it, it may still help us in influencing the Senator.

Some talking points about the problems with partial repeal of the law as opposed to full repeal:

• Partial repeal will still punish would-be students a second time — just a smaller number of students — for offenses for which they have already been punished once.
• Partial repeal will still reach back into earlier chapters of would-be students’ lives — no matter how long ago, even for decades, no matter what they have done with their lives in the meanwhile — if they had multiple convictions that occurred while they were in school.
• Partial repeal will still be economically discriminatory against lower-income people who qualify for and most need financial aid — just for a smaller number of them. Students from affluent families who are convicted of drug offenses will suffer no such penalty.
• Partial repeal will still runs counter to the wisdom of prevention and treatment professionals who see positive life steps — such as obtaining education — as key for keeping many of the people they are trying to help on the right track.
• Partial repeal will still have a racially discriminatory impact, because of unresolved problems like racial profiling that bias the drug war’s impact onto members of minority groups.
• Partial repeal will still have the same discouraging impact the editorial noted of deterring people who really are eligible for aid from applying — the mere presence of the question on the federal financial aid form has that effect. This is one of the reasons that the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, a body created by Congress, included removal of the drug question from the form among their recommendations made last year.

Visit www.RaiseYourVoice.com for extensive information on this issue and campaign, and thank you for taking action. Your participation is needed and may just make the difference!