Financial Aid and Drug Laws

Greetings readers,

As the beginning of the school semester draws near, I feel I just have to talk about something that a few of you may be unaware of. Currently, the law on the books for students receiving financial aid (which I feel is most of us) reads that any student that is receiving federal financial aid, if convicted of a drug charge, misdemeanor or felony, must lose and be denied aid. Right now how it works is, for your first conviction, you lose aid for one year, for the second conviction, two years, third conviction, aid is lost indefinitely. This does not take into account how hard it may be to regain the same aid that you had once it has been gone for any amount of time on top of the simple fact that once someone takes a year off from school, it can be hard to get back in. Now does anyone else see anything wrong with this picture?

I’ll save my usual rants for the end of this writing, but for now let’s talk about what I haven’t previously touched on. One, besides the fact that it is pretty well known that a lot of college students choose to experiment in drugs. Our friendly president-elect Mr. Obama has admitted to trying marijuana and cocaine. Now, with this piece of legislation, it does not matter whether you are a first time user, regular recreational user, addict, or if you are upholding a great GPA while you choose to use, if you get caught, you essentially get kicked out of school. This also does not take into consideration whether or not the law you broke was a misdemeanor or a felony. In many states now (including Mississippi) there are decriminalization laws in place that reduce the severity of punishment for small amounts (under 30 grams in MS) of marijuana. So think about this, if you are convicted of a misdemeanor possession of marijuana charge of less than one ounce, you lose your federal aid for a year on top of paying the fine and all the trouble that comes with the legal system itself. Now on top of losing the aid, it becomes nearly impossible to get it again. If someone commits a felony rape offense, they can still get aid once they get through the legal system. Why are misdemeanor drug charges (which are almost always for possession) treated the same as or more harshly than other felony charges? It is very confusing and it becomes obvious that this piece of legislation was not written very well.

Here comes the part that bothers me the most. The biggest drug problem on college campuses is (drum roll please…) alcohol. BUT if someone is convicted of an alcohol offense, including underage drinking, they are not affected outside of the legal system. What sense does this make? Legality aside, a drug is a drug is a drug. Alcohol kills more people than all the other drugs (minus tobacco), but apparently that is not the issue here.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office has stated that they have found no evidence that this legislation has deterred drug use. Well then why in the hell does it exist?

We’re taking up anyone that we see that chooses to use a substance other than the currently legally acceptable (let’s not make any distinctions between use, abuse, and addiction), and on top of stamping their permanent record with a drug charge that will already make it difficult to find a job, we are going to deny them aid and make them drop out of college? Shouldn’t we want people going to school, maturing, working toward degrees, and benefitting society?? Oh yeah, on top of all of this, they also cannot vote. Does this seem asinine to anyone else?

I am sick and tired of seeing how poorly this country is run and how inconsiderate a human race we have become. What is wrong with us? When will the United States stop locking up a quarter of the human population? When will we begin to make strides to HELP people? Let’s distinguish between the people that choose to use and the people that end up abusing and getting addicted. Let’s get the addicts help, provide real education for both the users and the non-users, and encourage learning and becoming a great contributor to society. We are the ones telling drug users that they will amount to nothing. We are the ones that give them no chance. We are a sick and dying country.

You can make fun of this problem and me for supporting a resolution to it all you want, but that will not make a seriously problem go away. This is a real problem and we need to wake up and realize what we are doing. It is time to tell our law makers, drug use is a health problem and NOT a criminal problem. We don’t arrest alcoholics or cigarette smokers…now why is that? The drug problem should only be a criminal problem when an impaired individual is endangering someone else.

So, if you have been convicted of a drug charge and need financial aid, is there hope? Yes, there is. You get to become a statistic. You get to play into their machine that keeps it all going. If you are convicted, there is a chance that you could attend a treatment center for a disease that you may or may not have. In turn, they will add you to the number of those in treatment for whichever drug you were busted for (probably marijuana). You’ll get to be treated like a drug addict whether you are or not. You will have to give up your civil liberties and submit to random drug tests the entire time so that they can monitor what you are putting in your body at all times. And then maybe, just maybe, if you play their game, they’ll play yours and give you your money back so that you can go back to school. No telling what happens to you during that time that you’re out of school and whether or not you will want to go back.

And in turn for you doing all of that, they get to add you as a statistic to turn to so they can say, “Hey look! These drugs are even worse than we thought! Look at all of these kids getting admitted into treatment for (drug of choice). This means we have to crack down more than ever! Tighten the punishment! That will keep our youth off of drugs.
Give me a break. Prohibition has never worked, and will never work. It is time to start to regain some trust in our government. How about we handle the situation for what it is. There are drugs. People are going to use drugs. They have for all of history. With that knowledge, let’s instead try and truly educate ourselves about these drugs so that we know what they do to us and the possible health risks associated with them. We could offer treatment to those with a problem. And perhaps we could even begin to regulate them so that we could accurately research them and treat them according to a margin of safety like every other legal substance. Simply waving a magic wand of prohibition will not make the problem of drug use go away.

Want an example of how a system of regulation and education can work? Look at cigarettes. The biggest killer of them all and one of the most addictive, and yet, more and more people are quitting and simply choosing not to start smoking. Why? Education. We know more now than we did before. We know that people DO die from these things and they DO cause serious side effects. People are still going to smoke, of course, but the fact that there has been a great reduction in use over the years shows that a system of education works far better than a system of “Just Say No.”

Now that I have gotten my usual spill out of the way, I hope that any of you reading will take what I say seriously because all of this IS a serious issue. It is important that you take it upon yourself and research and learn the truth because the government sure is not going to feed you with good information most of the time. Please educate yourselves and let your law makers know that you do not support this sort of thinking any longer! One reason that most law makers do not support this kind of reform is because they do not hear from those that they represent. We need to let them know that it would NOT be political suicide to support drug law reform; it would just be common sense.

We need to get smart about our drug laws.
We need to get smart about our kids.

Let’s encourage support. Let’s encourage love.
We’ve tried a doctrine of fear and hate for half a century, how about a doctrine of compassion?

Thanks for your time,

Jason.

Remember, get out there and research. We can change things, we just have to learn things.