SSDP Gets The Message Out On Capitol Hill

On November 1, 2007, SSDP hosted a Congressional Briefing on Capitol Hill to illustrate the destruction wrought on thousands of college students who have had their financial aid revoked for minor drug convictions. Good students are being forced to quit school or pay hopelessly high tuition. Unfortunately, some of them surely fall back into drug use, forever losing the chance that they had to get a degree and build a better life.

SSDP's Government Relations Director Tom Angell moderated the event, where six excellent speakers made a compelling case that the Aid Elimination Penalty must be revoked --- and you can watch every moment of the briefing, thanks to Youtube.

"We have a choice," said Congressman Bobby Scott (D-VA), "you can reduce crime or you can play politics." The Congressman spoke first, arguing that the Aid Elimination Penalty defies logic. "It's counterproductive, because those who are involved in drugs - the last thing you want to do is kick them out of school and give them a lot of free time with nothing to do"

Nicole Byrd, spokesperson for the American Association of University Professors, made a fact-filled argument that focused on the naked irrationality of the Aid Elimination Penalty. "Those with degrees not only add more to the public coffers, but they cost much less, with a fraction of the crime seen in the lesser educated population and a third of the claims for public assistance."

Marisa Garcia said, "I am one of the lucky ones - I didn't have to drop out of school." For simply being caught with a pipe, Marisa and her family had to absorb thousands of dollars in extra expenses as her aid was revoked. How anyone can think this law is fair is beyond this blogger.

Kandice Hawes also had her aid revoked. "At the time that i was affected, I was a responsible, full time, hardworking student," she said. Nevertheless, a single possession ticket was all it took to send her scrambling to find a new source of aid - a search that ended with the Perry Fund.

Representing "The Association of Addiction Professionals," Cynthia Moreno Tuohy offered a clinical view of drug use and shared the story of how she overcame restrictions that are similar to the Aid Elimination Penalty. According to Cynthia, policy makers are not thinking about drug use holistically. "We know that addiction abuse is a bio-psycho-social-spiritual disease and we know that its a medical disease. And yet, ... this law does not treat this as a medical disease"

"We find that its very classist, and quite frankly, its a very racist policy," said Hilary Shelton, the Washington Bureau Director for the NAACP. He shed light on how the Aid Elimination Penalty's effects are mostly targeted towards poor Americans.

Finally, there was a short Q&A at the end of the event. Watch Hilary and Tom field questions on racism and more extreme drug use.

Like all great fights, there have been setbacks in the decade-long battle to end the injustice of the Aid Elimination Penalty. Nevertheless, those who care about fair and sensible drug policy should take heart: as is apparent in these videos, the facts are on our side, and the facts will win in the end.

Merry consumerist

Hey Kids (and people who are already being prompted to make their holiday wishlists):

Whether you're the kid who needs all the new toys, the kid whose principles of reduce/reuse/recycle are thoroughly chopped down and covered in energy-guzzling electric lights during the holiday season, or the kid whose wish list looks something like "Um, I dunno. Bottle of shampoo? Pay my bills? Ramen noodles? Tuition? Books? Pack of cigarettes? Just give me money?", here's an idea:

Put donations to SSDP on your wish list.

Speaking from experience, putting non-profits on your wish list makes your family think you're just darling. Also, it makes shopping easy, saves dorm/apartment space, makes up for all those times you read an email asking for donations and said "Sorry guys, I'm broke!", and removes any guilt you may or may not have for your Sasquatch-sized ecological footprint. It makes the giver feel extra-special because they're giving to you and your favorite non-profit(s) which will then give to society which will then give back to them. Epic win!

I usually make my wish lists on a web site and add links to the donation pages of organizations. (Making a website also impresses your family members, unless you fill it with unreadable backgrounds and animated .gifs, in which case Uncle Harry will call you a n00b.) If you do your lists on paper or by word of mouth, just include the home page URL and "where you can click the little donate button." (ssdp.org, in the purple box near the top. Or ssdp.org/donate for those whose memories are in good condition.)

This is also a good way to give your relatives a crash course in drug policy reform. No matter how unreceptive your family may be, they will see your wish list and think "What the... Is Johnny advertising his reckless drug use to the whole family? Madness! Or is it not actually about reckless drug use?" This holiday season, give your relatives an epiphany.

Or ask for a Wii. It's your wish list. If you like shiny new books (I do!! [/subtle hint]), check out the DPA's bookstore for a huge wordgasmic collection of drug policy lit.

SSDP’s Message Resounds: “Stop The War on Drugs from Becoming a War on Education."

Students across the country have their eyes on Congress. Demanding that the government repeal the Aid Elimination Penalty - part of the Higher Education Act that strips students with drug convictions of their financial aid - they are educated, organized, and passionate. And word is spreading: college newspapers have been scrutinizing this law recently as activists work to educate more people about its damaging effects.

Kristen Hodges’ article in The Kansas State Collegian quotes SSDP’s Government Relations Director Tom Angell describing the national coalition for repeal of the penalty that the group has built, including more than 350 organizations.

"We've been mobilizing students ever since day one in working to try to repeal that penalty," Angell said, "and it is not just a bunch of students that are angry about this. We have prominent education groups, like the National Education Association, and folks concerned with addiction recovery."

The national office has certainly had success, but campus chapters are the heart of SSDP. In the University of Connecticut’s The Daily Campus, Brittany Dorn reports on the success of the campus’ SSDP chapter.

UConn's chapter of SSDP was started last fall by Dan Cornelious, a 7th-semester political science major, who is now president of the 20-member group. The UConn SSDP chapter has been active on campus in a variety of ways this past year, from hosting speakers and discussions - such as a medical marijuana panel held earlier this month - to working with the administration to change drug policies and punishments.

Chapters are getting creative in fighting the effects of the Aid Elimination Penalty. In an editorial, the staff of the University of Maryland’s The Diamondback applauds work done by that school’s SSDP chapter.

Now it's apparent, as The Diamondback's Nathan Cohen reported yesterday, that SSDP has also employed a brilliant, unflinching method of lobbying resident assistants to use discretion when reporting marijuana use. To be clear, we don't support an on-campus housing scene where bong hits are more common than books. But SSDP is appealing to what this is all about: the appalling disregard of justice Resident Life officials have displayed so far.

Because Resident Life's policies on pot use are baseless, unbalanced and indefensible, SSDP will likely find great success in appealing to RAs. We hope that, as Resident Life will likely attempt to assail SSDP's efforts, RAs will do their duty to consider the plight of their fellow students and think critically about Resident Life's obsession with micro-managing its staff.

Finally, back to the Kansas State Collegian article by Kristen Hodges. She relates the story of one student and shows how the effects of the Aid Elimination Penalty might be more widespread than the 200,000 students who have had their aid revoked. With SSDP chapters around the country raising this issue, newspapers are covering it and finding stories like this that make clear the problems with current law.

"We were smoking in my friend's vehicle and got pulled over," he said. "The cop smelled drugs, and so he called for backup and started searching until he found a roach in the ashtray."

Though his financial aid was not affected, the alumnus said the police threatened him and said he ruined his future and told him, "when Sallie Mae hears about this, your financial aid is gone."

The alumnus said he could have contested his conviction because the drugs were in his friend's vehicle, but he was too worried about losing his financial aid to fight the case, so he pled no contest and got a diversion.

Activists around the country should take heart: you are being heard and you can make a difference. As widespread coverage of SSDP activity continues, the movement will only grow, and we'll come closer and closer to finally living in a country with sensible drug policy.

Fair and balanced

Today in lecture, I made an announcement about how SSDP is having a week of action to repeal the HEA Aid Elimination penalty.

I made the announcement brief but thorough: explained what it is, how it's being reauthorized, how many students have been affected, how it affects students with at least a 2.5 GPA, how low-income students tend to suffer more, how it's counterproductive.

I passed out postcards for people to fill out if they so chose to take action. After class, I collected them. Not everyone filled one out - hey, freedom of choice, it's cool - but one of the otherwise blank ones contained a message for me:

"I am all for helping people out, but you did not say anything about the other side of the issue. You need to inform us about the other side."

Me and that postcard stood a while giving each other a long, hard, bewildered look.

What is the other side of the story?

Seriously. Nothing, absolutely nothing and nobody benefits from this penalty. Well, Rep. Souder, maybe drug dealers recruiting long-term customers and salespeople, apparently recruiters for the armed forces too. Schools, economy, family, human rights, minority advancement, criminal justice & law enforcement, community health & safety, faith in the government, reducing drug abuse itself... yeah, pretty much everything else stands to lose.

There is this American myth that every issue has two sides with equally compelling arguments. Like everything's a complicated issue for which you have to consider tons of different conflicting factors. Indeed there are complexities within the drug policy issue at large - in fact, the existence of complexities prompts us to work for reform and reject zero tolerance/prohibition. The HEA Aid Elimination penalty, though? Hell, even my dad the well-meaning oldschool prohibitionist immediately understood the inherent nonsense and misguided morality of the thing.

Come on, people. 9 out of 10 dentists recommend repealing this penalty; the 10th dentist is a con artist who is not actually a dentist at all but a sadist who likes ripping out teeth with rusty tweezers and without Novocaine. Use your noggins. Sometimes you really can confidently pick a side; the issue is not always way beyond your comprehension. Must we insist on remaining disoriented in order to consider ourselves open-minded? Welcome to the post-9/11 world; this has been me ranting about my pet peeve.

Frontline Delivers the Drug War Goods

If you enjoyed The Drug Years on VH1, you’re in for a treat from the great documentarians at PBS’s Frontline.

With stories from Columbian smugglers, New York City crack middlemen, DEA officials from the last 40 years, and doctors specializing in treatment, “Drug Wars,” a website run by Frontline, chronicles drug policy with accuracy and depth. It includes interviews, research, and video clips. Here are some interesting nuggets.

Drug policy wonks sometimes talk about “black markets” created by current drug laws. Dick Gregorie, an assistant DA in Florida who has spent his career dealing with trafficked cases, explains the massive scale of illegal drug operations in this interview.

How would you describe the size, extent, parameters, of the international narcotics business?

The drug trafficking business has grown into one of the world's largest enterprises--I would say equal with the oil industry or some of the major corporations in the world.

Are you talking about cash?

We are talking about billions of dollars every year in liquid cash.

Would you say they [are] controlling some economies?

They do control economies. I would say the narcotics industry in Colombia is more cash ready than [its] government, or almost any other South American [government].

What are the mega-traffickers up against? Bill Alden began working as a narc for the DEA in the 1960s. He has a story and some thoughts from the inside:

In March, 1984, the Colombia national police along with DEA in Bogota made the Tranquilandia seizure, which was the single largest cocaine seizure of that time. It was 22,000 pounds of finished, refined cocaine. ...

Later that year, I made a presentation to the California Narcotic Officers Association in San Diego. I remember alluding to Tranquilandia, and insinuating that we might have turned a corner. I really always wanted to go back and apologize for that later on. There was no impact. Almost twelve tons of cocaine was seized, and that had absolutely no impact on the market at all, on availability. It continued just as it did, as ferocious as it was before. And then we really began to realize how big it really was.

We realized that if you could seize that amount of drugs and not have an impact on the traffic, then you better start doing something else besides focusing solely on the law enforcement aspects of the problem.

Does policy get better once the drugs hit American streets? Michael Gelacek served on the U.S. Sentencing Commission in the 1990s, which recommended to Congress that crack and powder cocaine sentencing be equalized. Under the laws of that time and today (as the recommendation was rejected), possessing a gram of crack results in a substantially longer jail sentence than possessing a gram of cocaine. He traces the origin of this unfair law.

If you go back and look at the Congressional Record, you'll see that they tossed around all kinds of numbers for ratios. They ultimately settled on a 100-to-1, and I don't remember where that came from. I think they plucked it out of the sky. They talked about 20-to-1, 50-to-1, 25-to-1. In the initial ratios between powder and crack cocaine, no one talked about 100-to-1. That came about as a one-upsman contest between the House and the Senate--who could be tougher on crack cocaine. And they both proved they could be very tough...

We know treatment works. We don't spend a lot of money on treatment. We know that education works. We don't spend a lot of money on education. One thing we know that doesn't work is incarceration. We don't cure anybody by putting them in jail. All we do is take them off the streets.

If you're wondering how much of your money goes towards these policies, Frontline has a handy chart. (17.7 Billion).
And these few bits of information barely scratch the surface of Frontline’s site. If you're interested in hard facts about drug policy, there is a ton of content here.

Stop Bush's Drug War Draft!

Check out this quote from a 2003 RAND report (PDF) commissioned by the Pentagon:

The [armed] services might be able to significantly expand their pool of potential recruits by adopting policies that target youth who plan to go to college...

Hmm. Policies that target youth who plan to go to college. I'm not sure if I can think of any of those.

Oh. Right.

High School Tyranny in Colorado

Hide your cell phones, kids, unless you want your high school principal pawing through them, reading your messages, and impersonating you to entrap your friends. This is exactly what happened at Monarch High School in Louisville, Colorado.

It's stunning that adults thought that this extraordinary violation of privacy was okay.

School officials at Monarch High in Louisville are committing felonies and violating students' privacy by seizing students' cell phones, reading their text messages and making notes about it in students' permanent files, the ACLU warned Wednesday.

Why would administrators do this? What could possibly drive them to such puritanical lengths?

The never ending crusade against high school marijuana use, of course.

It gets downright creepy. In a letter to the Board of Education of the school system, the ACLU describes one mother getting her son's cell phone back from Assistant Principal Drew Adams.

When the student’s mother finally recovered it the following Tuesday, she discovered that Adams had apparently drafted a text message and had attempted to send it from her son’s phone to one of her son’s friends. The text message appeared in the phone’s outbox with an unambiguous time and date stamp showing that it was drafted while Adams had possession of the phone. The text message itself appeared to be Adams’ attempt to engage the receiving student in a conversation while Adams was falsely representing himself as a student.

The drug war has turned our public policy into a farce. Under this set of absurd laws, our officials turn into criminal impersonators and those who we think we can trust violate our basic rights. For what? To bust a dozen high school students?

Dylan Hayword, a Monarch senior, tells us why we should all be concerned by this kind of insane abuse of power.

Hayward told 9NEWS he would not want administrators searching his cell phone because of personal messages he receives from his mother.

"She lets me know about family affairs, Grandma's surgery and stuff like that," Hayward said. "I don't want everyone going through my texts and learning about my problems and stuff like that... It's not cool."

Franklin Pierce University Forced by Local Police to Help Bust its Own Students

Drug war lunacy has taken hold in Rindge, NH and it isn't pretty. A new policy of notifying local police about suspected drug use on campus has disrupted the school's educational mission and provoked widespread alarm among students.

After discovering a marijuana grinder during a routine maintenance check, campus security called police to investigate. Police then locked students out of their residence for 26 hours while obtaining a search warrant. This video made by Franklin Pierce SSDP members shows how several students were denied access to all of their possessions, including their school work, for a full day so that one of them could be investigated for drug paraphernalia:



If this sounds like a typical college campus misconduct case, it's not. Sources familiar with the situation have informed me that Rindge Police threatened campus security themselves with arrest if they didn't start sacrificing students to the local drug war. It's like saying, "We know people smoke pot on campus. Help us bust them, or we'll bust you."

It's hard to understand what could motivate this type of law-enforcement. Small-town police departments with less to occupy their time are frequently prone to drug war excesses. College town culture clashes are nothing new either. But the sheer audacity of all this is stunning, and it raises important questions about whether this police department understands its proper role in the community.

Beyond that, it highlights how quickly the war on drugs can become a war on education itself. Throughout the nation, students bear the stigma of presumed drug involvement and are targeted, not just by law-enforcement, but by federal law that removes young people from school for petty offenses. The behavior of police at Franklin Pierce University is symptomatic of the corrupted drug war mentality that we must investigate and destroy our young people if necessary in order to discourage drug use.

This is not a war which seeks to protect and uplift America's youth. It is many things, but it is so clearly not that.

By Scott Morgan - cross-posted on StopTheDrugWar.org Speakeasy

Don't Take Any Odds In This Fight

Today’s fight: on one side, Muhammed Ali in his prime; on the other, some random weak guy in a suit. The results are sure to be grotesque. But the fight is not nearly as one-sided as the next match-up: famed Chicago-school economist Milton Friedman vs. federal drug Czar John Walters.

In a recent interview, San Diego Herald Tribune blogger Chris Reed asked the Czar to refute Milton Friedman’s criticisms of the drug war. Friedman, who some call the father of the conservative movement (but who is an ideological ally of liberals on some social issues), wrote an important article for Newsweek in 1972 criticizing Nixon’s emerging “drug war”:

Legalizing drugs would simultaneously reduce the amount of crime and raise the quality of law enforcement. Can you conceive of any other measure that would accomplish so much to promote law and order?

But, you may say, must we accept defeat? Why not simply end the drug traffic? That is where experience under Prohibition is most relevant. We cannot end the drug traffic. We may be able to cut off opium from Turkey but there are innumerable other places where the opium poppy grows. With French cooperation, we may be able to make Marseilles an unhealthy place to manufacture heroin but there are innumerable other places where the simple manufacturing operations involved can be carried out. So long as large sums of money are involved -- and they are bound to be if drugs are illegal -- it is literally hopeless to expect to end the traffic or even to reduce seriously its scope. In drugs, as in other areas, persuasion and example are likely to be far more effective than the use of force to shape others in our image.

A well-reasoned blow from Friedman. Czar Walter has some explaining to do - after all, the drug war is what puts tax-payer money in his piggy bank. Reed transcribes his flimsy response:

he said what "the facts really say" is that Milton Friedman's criticisms of the drug war were "untrue -- demonstrably untrue."

This is what happens when you match-up a heavy-weight thinker with a mindless bureaucrat who’s profession is an embodiment of unfair, irrational laws.

Time to end with a joke:
Q: What did George Bush say when asked why he opposed the position of drug czar?
A: “That job is far too important to trust to a Russian”

The danger of bread is that too much of it is spent on the war on drugs!

See because "bread" is an old slang term for money. Yeah.

Anyway, this has been circulating on the internets for a long time, but I got a kick out of it and thought it should be in DGD. (It was in my friend's livejournal. Thanks, friend.)

The Dangers of Bread

A recent Cincinnati Enquirer headline read, "Smell of baked bread may be health hazard." The article went on to describe the dangers of the smell of baking bread. The main danger, apparently, is that the organic components of this aroma may break down ozone (I'm not making this stuff up).

I was horrified. When are we going to do something about bread- induced global warming? Sure, we attack tobacco companies, but when is the government going to go after Big Bread?

Well, I've done a little research, and what I've discovered should make anyone think twice....

1. More than 98 percent of convicted felons are bread eaters.
2. Fully HALF of all children who grow up in bread-consuming households score below average on standardized tests.
3. In the 18th century, when virtually all bread was baked in the home, the average life expectancy was less than 50 years; infant mortality rates were unacceptably high; many women died in childbirth; and diseases such as typhoid, yellow fever and influenza ravaged whole nations.
4. More than 90 percent of violent crimes are committed within 24 hours of eating bread.
5. Bread is made from a substance called "dough." It has been proven that as little as one pound of dough can be used to suffocate a mouse. The average American eats more bread than that in one month!
6. Primitive tribal societies that have no bread exhibit a low occurrence of cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease and osteoporosis.
7. Bread has been proven to be addictive. Subjects deprived of bread and given only water to eat begged for bread after only two days.
8. Bread is often a "gateway" food item, leading the user to "harder" items such as butter, jelly, peanut butter and even cold cuts.
9. Bread has been proven to absorb water. Since the human body is more than 90 percent water, it follows that eating bread could lead to your body being taken over by this absorptive food product, turning you into a soggy, gooey bread-pudding person.
10. Newborn babies can choke on bread.
11. Bread is baked at temperatures as high as 400 degrees Fahrenheit! That kind of heat can kill an adult in less than one minute.
12. Most American bread eaters are utterly unable to distinguish between significant scientific fact and meaningless statistical babbling.

In light of these frightening statistics, we propose the following bread restrictions:

1. No sale of bread to minors.
2. No advertising of bread within 1000 feet of a school.
3. A 300 percent federal tax on all bread to pay for all the societal ills we might associate with bread.
4. No animal or human images, nor any primary colors (which may appeal to children) may be used to promote bread usage.
5. A $4.2 zillion fine on the three biggest bread manufacturers. Please send this e-mail on to everyone you know who cares about this crucial issue.

At least they didn't recommend bread prohibition. Imagine the impurities that would show up in black market bread, and the exorbitant prices, and the fires starting when people cram dangerous industrial ovens into secret basement rooms, and the violence surrounding the illegal bread trade, and the environmental destruction when people start growing wheat in national forests, and so on!

So, is your bullshit detector functioning properly? Good. Help us end the federal war on bread! I mean drugs! which is justified largely by nonsense statistics and non-causal correlations.

Similar to the dangers of bread is this classic on the dangers of water.