SSDP educates "The Nation"

That's right, The Nation magazine covered SSDP's lawsuit that challenges the Higher Education Act Aid Elimination Penalty. You need a subscription to see the full piece on the magazine's website, but here's a juicy taste of the piece's last two paragraphs:

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings was "not available" to comment on the lawsuit or any of its claims. Her department has been equally forthcoming in making information about who is affected by the HEA provision available to the public. Responding to inquiries from legislators and the media, SSDP filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the department in December 2004 for a state-by-state breakdown of students who answered the FAFSA drug question the "wrong" way. After months of sometimes farcical bureaucratic stonewalling, SSDP was presented with a bill of more than $4,000 to conduct what should have been a simple database search--a mark-up on product worthy of the Cali cartel and one far beyond the means of a struggling nonprofit. Though its FOIA request was intended to reveal the activity of government and served no commercial purpose, the student group was denied a fee waiver. "As SSDP's campaign could directly benefit those who would profit from the deregulation or legalization of drugs," a department official explained in his final rejection letter, "I cannot conclude...that SSDP has no commercial interest in the disclosure sought."

"I guess the suggestion is that if people know how many students in every state are affected by the HEA provision, the drug war will end," says SSDP campaigns director Tom Angell, whose organization filed a separate federal lawsuit against the Education Department with the aid of Public Citizen to secure a fee waiver for its FOIA request. In response to the lawsuit, the department finally relented, agreeing in late March to waive the fee and provide the data by the end of the month. After handing over incomplete spreadsheets on March 31, the government finally sent the full data on April 12. Should the drug war end as a result, SSDP promises to donate any ensuing profits to repairing the damage caused by decades of foolish drug-control policies.

Ya gotta love that ending. By the way, the article is titled "Drug War Flunks Out." Brilliant.

New blog on drugs and drug policy

Luke Brown just gave me a heads up about his new blog: Rehabology

It looks pretty interesting. In Luke's own words:

What we are attempting, in our own small way, is to not only tackle the big headline stories about drugs but also try and focus on the faces behind the stereotypes and the people who don’t make the front pages. In addition we would like to explore the connections between those who produce and consume drugs, legal or illegal, as well as those who campaign for or against their use.

Check it out.

Stop expansion of school searches

Stop Congress From Expanding School Searches

Students for Sensible Drug Policy is asking for your help to stop a bill that would further curtail the rights of students in public schools all across the country. The so-called “Student and Teacher Safety Act of 2006” (H.R. 5295) would make it easier for teachers and school administrators to search students’ lockers and bags for drugs and other contraband. SSDP needs your help to make sure that this bill never becomes law.

Currently, in order for a teacher to search a student’s locker they need to have “reasonable suspicion” that the student is in possession of illegal drugs. H.R. 5295 would change the standard needed for a search to “colorable suspicion,” a term that has been made up entirely for this bill. Essentially, a teacher would need nothing more than a hunch in order to search a student’s locker or possessions.

This bill is nothing more than another attack on the constitutional rights of young people by the federal government. Students should never have to check their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse door.

Please take two minutes to send a letter to your member of Congress asking him or her to oppose H.R. 5295. SSDP has created a pre-written letter that you can easily send by visiting http://capwiz.com/mobilize/issues/alert/?alertID=8779706

And if you can afford it, please consider making a financial contribution – large or small – to SSDP’s efforts to beat back the government’s Drug War attacks on young people at http://www.ssdp.org/donate/

Thank you for taking action to stop this drastic bill. Please enter your e-mail address below so that SSDP can continue to keep you informed of our efforts to stop this dangerous piece of legislation from becoming law.

Email Address:

Those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it

DEA head Karen Tandy tells Canadian TV that alcohol prohibition was a good idea:

DARE to get rid of DARE

The Los Angeles Times seems to have printed a special "Sensible Drug Policy Edition" today.

In addition to this great article on the HEA Aid Elimination Penalty, the Times printed this hard-hitting exposé of DARE and other failed "Just Say No" programs.

Anti-drug overdose?
Many school prevention programs don't help, scientists say, and may even do harm.
By Marnell Jameson, Special to The Times

LIKE millions of kids across America, ninth-grader Mariana Kouloumian was taught in elementary school not to drink or use drugs — ever. To her, the message seemed clear except for one hitch: It didn't square with what she saw in the real world, or even at home.

"When I told my parents what I learned in [school], that drinking was bad, they said they knew that, but that a drink once in a while was OK," Mariana says.

Today, at 14, the Los Angeles girl dismisses much of what she learned in the drug-education program, saying that when she's older she plans to follow the more moderate example set by her mother and father.

"My parents know how much alcohol they can handle. They only drink socially — and wouldn't drink and drive." Further, she credits her parents, not school lessons, with helping her turn down tobacco, alcohol and drugs — all of which she's been offered. "I learned what I know at home," she says. To her, the anti-drug program seemed out of touch.

All of us who went through the DARE program probably had similar experiences of realizing that abstinence-only messages just don't jive with reality. Some, like Mariana, are lucky enough to have the voice of reason coming from their parents. Others, however, are not so lucky.

Most drug-prevention programs don't work because they use scare tactics, Hanson says. "They tell kids things they will later find out aren't true, like alcohol is a gateway to drugs and will seduce you into trying more dangerous substances. Also, by saying all alcohol is bad, they send kids home thinking that if their parents have a glass of wine with dinner or a beer with their pizza, they are abusing drugs. If a child's father happens to tend bar, they come home and ask why he's a drug dealer. Then what happens when the child sees the off-duty DARE officer having a beer at the local bowling alley?"

[snip]

Some researchers and scientists worry about the harm some programs may be doing to kids. A 1998 Illinois study, for example, found that DARE inadvertently encouraged a few students to try drugs.

[snip]

"The harm is that kids don't need these messages yet, and by making them too simplistic, they will dismiss them when they're older and do need this message," Robertson says. She adds that these programs make kids who have never considered using drugs see themselves as potential drug users.

About two years ago, I went to the DARE National Conference to gather information about the program and to represent the DARE Generation. I spoke with countless law enforcement officers who, while genuinely concerned about drug abuse, would refuse to admit that an abstinence-only scare-tactic based program simply did nothing to prevent drug abuse. Steve West, a researcher who found the DARE program to be ineffective, says it best:

"We weren't saying the program wasn't well intentioned," says West, a professor of rehabilitation counseling. "Just that as a prevention effort, it was a huge waste of time and money. There are better programs."

What better programs, you ask? Here's one off the top of my head.

Oh, and this article appeared in the HEALTH section of the Times. Looks like people are starting to get the picture that drug abuse is a public health problem, and not a criminal justice problem.

Read the rest of the article here.

SSDP spreads the word in the mainstream press

The Los Angeles Times has a story on the HEA Aid Elimination Penalty and SSDP's recently released state-by-state report. The piece opens with the ordeal Marisa Garcia had to go through after being convicted of a minor drug offense.

After Marisa Garcia was busted for possessing a pipe with marijuana residue, she pleaded guilty, paid a $415 fine and thought she had paid her debt to society.

She was wrong: When she applied for federal financial aid to attend Cal State Fullerton, she learned she was ineligible because of the misdemeanor conviction.

"I was thinking I made this horrible mistake which is going to ruin my access to education," said Garcia, 25, of Santa Fe Springs. The sociology major's mother is refinancing her home mortgage to help pay Garcia's fees . "You've already been punished and now you get punished twice … and I don't think that punishment is benefiting anyone," Garcia said.

She is among hundreds of thousands of students denied federal student aid or who didn't apply for it because drug convictions made them ineligible under a 1998 amendment to the Higher Education Act intended to deter student drug use.

The piece also quotes SSDP, the ACLU, and Representative Barney Frank (D-MA), chief sponsor of the Removing Impediments to Students' Education (RISE) Act, which would fully repeal the Aid Elimination Penalty.

"Students are absolutely outraged that our access to education is being lost as collateral damage in the drug war," said Tom Angell of the Washington, D.C.-based Students for Sensible Drug Policy, which has lobbied Congress to repeal the measure and is a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education.

[snip]

"It's kind of symptomatic of people treating drugs in an excessive, almost histrionic fashion, where drugs are treated worse than murder and rape," Frank said. "Why single drugs out as worse? Why penalize poor people as opposed to rich people?"

[snip]

"This law doesn't deter drug use. It deters education," said Adam Wolf, an attorney with the ACLU's Drug Law Reform Project in Santa Cruz. "Funding education is one of the smartest uses of tax dollars. If students stay in college, they have a far greater chance of becoming productive, tax-paying members of society."

If you appreciate SSDP's eforts to spread the word about this disastrous legislation, please make a donation today.

Everything I learned about drugs...

...came from Pee-Wee Herman.

Save DARE Generation Diary from censorship

If you hop around the blogosphere often enough, chances are, you've heard about "net neutrality". If not, this video says it all:



So why should DARE Generation Diary readers support net neutrality? I'm glad you asked...

The Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) has a multi-million dollar budget, and one of their primary functions is to stop attempts at reforming drug policy. If network neutrality is abandoned and big telecom companies are able to control the content that you see, it's not hard to imagine the Drug Czar shelling out some money to these service providers to effectively block you from reading DARE Generation Diary. His Czarness has already spent loads of taxpayer money on lobbying against drug policy reform efforts.

Beware: There are some telecom front groups out there like DontRegulate.org who claim that legislative attempts to uphold network neutrality are nothing but government schemes to control your access to the internet. For the libertarian's among us, government "regulation" may seem like a bad idea. But, on the contrary, these bills ensure an even playing field for both non-profit and for-profit corporations. Putting the digital marketplace in the hands of a few telecom corporations not only puts a stranglehold on free speech, but also the free market.

To save the internet as-we-know-it, and to protect the DARE Generation's right to freely express our views, head over to SaveTheInternet.com and send an e-mail to your congressional delegation today.

(Note: SSDP does not officially endorse the SaveTheInternet campaign. The views presented here are the author's.)

Drug Czar grasps at straws

The Drug Czar's "blog" is touting this year's just-released Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) numbers, which track mentions of drugs in emergency room admissions.

New Report: Cocaine, Marijuana Top Drugs Implicated in Emergency Room Admissions

Yesterday, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) released the latest report showing drug-related admissions to emergency rooms. Here are the results in a nutshell:

The 2004 DAWN estimates that cocaine was involved in 383,350 visits to emergency rooms; marijuana was involved in 215,665 visits; heroin was involved in 162,137 visits; stimulants, including amphetamines and methamphetamine, were involved in 102,843; and other illicit drugs such as PCP, Ecstasy, and GHB were involved with much less frequency.

But, as Pete at Drug War Rant explains, these numbers don't say anything at all about whether or not a particular drug caused someone to visit the emergency room. The only thing the numbers measure is how many times a given drug was mentioned during an E.R. visit.

However, unlike the conclusions sometimes drawn in news reports, what DAWN does NOT demonstrate is any connection between the use of a drug and the likelihood that it will send you to the emergency room.

But don't think that's going to stop the Drug Czar from going ahead and tricking lazy reporters into writing hysterical stories on how today's potent marijuana is sending unprecedented numbers of people to the hospital...

The Anti-Drug: The Anti-Anti-Drug.

Via NORML:

San Marcos, TX: Teenagers exposed to anti-marijuana public service announcements (PSAs) produced by the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) are more likely to hold positive attitudes about the drug and are more likely to express their intent to use cannabis after viewing the advertisements, according to a study published in the May issue of the journal Addictive Behaviors. [emphasis added]

An archive of these ridiculous, counter-productive ads can be found here.

Over the past few years, the ad-campaign's budget has been cut from $195 million to $99 million annually. Responding to the budget cuts, His Czarness John Walters said: “It’s time for Congress to wake up and support a program that is working. There is no excuse for not supporting it.”

No excuse, John? What about the fact that your program is clearly NOT working? It seems that anti-marijuana propaganda only succeeds at turning more kids onto the drug. But maybe that's the ONDCP's plan. After all, more marijuana-using teens means more justification for the War on Drugs - and the fat paychecks that go along with it.

If Walters really is concerned about teen drug use, he would stop lying to himself and the rest of the country. The ONDCP's website says that LSD, if taken in a large enough dose, "produces delusions and visual hallucinations." So, how big of a dose have you taken, Mr. Czar?