From the folks at CHEAR (Coalition for Higher Education Act Reform):

Earlier this year, the House Education & Labor Committee passed a student aid bill with language to scale back Rep. Mark Souder’s infamous financial aid/drug conviction law (http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/595/higher_education_act_HEA_drug_provision_vote). The new version of the law would only count sales convictions — a great step forward, though we still want full repeal. More than 200,000 students already have lost aid for college because of drug convictions.

Tomorrow, we’re told, Rep. Souder will offer an amendment on the floor of the House of Representatives, seeking to have this good language stripped from the final version of the bill. PLEASE CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVE AND ASK THAT HE OR SHE VOTE NO ON SOUDER’S AMENDMENT TO THE STUDENT AID BILL. Students should not lose access to college because of drug possession convictions! The bill is called SAFRA, the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act, H.R. 3221.

To reach your Representative (or find out who your Rep is), call the Congressional Switchboard at (202) 224-3121. When the receptionist in your representative’s office answers the phone, politely say something like the following: “My name is _____ and I’d like Rep. ___ to vote against Rep. Souder’s amendment to the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act, which would deny educational opportunities to students with minor drug possession convictions. Blocking access to education causes more drug problems and hurts the economy. Thank you.”

When you’re done, please forward this alert to all your friends, and please post it to sites like Facebook and Twitter too. Visit http://www.raiseyourvoice.com for further information on this issue and the hundreds of organizations that support repeal.

Related posts

• Bill would restore financial aid for students convicted of marijuana possession only (1)
• Stash for Mon, Aug 4, 2008 (0)
• Appeals Court Rejects Challenge To Law Denying Student Aid To Drug Offenders (0)

WASHINGTON (McClatchy) — College students convicted of illegal drug possession could get federal financial aid for the first time in more than a decade under legislation aimed at overhauling the student loan system.

The bill, which a House of Representatives committee approved recently and which the full House probably will consider after its August recess, says that those convicted of selling illegal drugs still would be barred from receiving federal financial aid.

However, students convicted of possession would be able to get loans, grants and work-study assistance.

The new provision is part of the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act, which passed the House Education and Labor Committee on July 21. It would increase the maximum Pell Grant, the primary federal need-based scholarship, and end the private sector’s role in student loans. Instead, the government would be the sole provider of student loans.

As of 2006, nearly 200,000 students who’d been convicted of drug charges — about 1 percent of students across the country — had been denied student aid under the law.

Under current law, students convicted of possessing illegal drugs are ineligible for federal aid for one year for first offenses, two years for second offenses and forever for third offenses. Those convicted of selling are barred for two years for first offenses and forever for second offenses.

In February 2006, Congress softened the law so that it would affect only those who were convicted of possessing or selling drugs while they were in college and receiving aid. Before, the law applied to prior convictions.

Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN) was the author of the 1998 bill that revoked student aid from those caught with cannabis or drugs.  His reasoning was that if the government is going to pay for your college, the taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook for subsidizing a student’s pot smoking or drug use.  Because if you’re really trying to insure that a young person doesn’t get deeply involved with drugs, the best way to do that is to make sure they can’t get an education, can’t get a good job, and are forced to deal marijuana or drugs to make ends meet.

Oddly enough, Rep. Souder doesn’t seem concerned at all about alcohol binge drinking on campuses that actually kill students.  He sponsored no legislation to make sure that students under age 21 lose their federal student aid if they are caught drinking, for instance.  Somehow the drug that leads to the most drop-outs, date rapes, and death of any drug on campus was miraculously spared from his morality crusade and the safest substance of the group – cannabis – was not.

Related posts

• Congress to vote tomorrow on changing student aid penalty to apply to drug sales only (1)
• Stash for Mon, Aug 4, 2008 (0)
• Appeals Court Rejects Challenge To Law Denying Student Aid To Drug Offenders (0)

“You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.”

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Letter from a Birmingham Jail
April 16, 1963

Today our nation honors what would’ve been this week the eightieth birthday of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., on the eve of the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama as the 44th president of these United States.  I was sixty-four days old when an assassin’s bullet cut down Dr. King in the prime of his life.  Today I am six-hundred forty days older than Dr. King when he was killed.  Tomorrow I will see something few people my age and older thought we’d ever see, yet something Dr. King had dreamed from the start.

There remains a grave injustice to be battled, the most unjust of laws to be disobeyed, a law that by its definition is not rooted in eternal law and natural law: the man made code that declares nature itself to be illegal, the prohibition on cannabis.  Yet when I mention marijuana law reform in the context of the great civil rights struggles in America, so many are quick to dismiss me with snickers of derision.  ”You just want pot legal so you can get high!” is a common refrain.

Read the rest of this entry by clicking here

Related posts

• Phelps Apologizes for Marijuana Use (18)
• Is Phelps Getting Off Easy? (0)
• 14-time Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps’ marijuana bong photo (18)

Download the NORML Daily Audio Stash for 2008-08-04

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Today’s Stash features part three of my interview with Wendy Chapkis, Richard Webb, and Valerie Corral on the book “Dying to Get High”, which chronicles medical marijuana in California from Prop 215 through the advent of Corral’s WAMM collective (Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana).  Catch up with Part 1 and Part 2 from last week.

Kris Krane joins us from Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) to relay the sad news that the Higher Education Act was reauthorized along with its Aid Elimination Penalty.  Learn how that affects college students’ financial aid and the incentive to join the military instead.

Related posts

• Stash for Mon, Jul 28, 2008 (0)
• Stash for Thu, Jul 31, 2008 (0)
• Appeals Court Rejects Challenge To Law Denying Student Aid To Drug Offenders (0)

NORML.ORG US: Appeals Court Rejects Challenge To Law Denying Student Aid To Drug Offenders
Opponents of a law that prevents students who are convicted of drug offenses from receiving federal financial aid were handed another legal defeat today.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, upholding a 2006 decision by a U.S. District Court, has refused to reinstate a lawsuit that sought to strike down the law.

In its ruling the appeals court rejected arguments by the Students for Sensible Drug Policy Foundation, which filed the appeal, that the federal law is unconstitutional.

The group argued, in part, that denial of financial aid by the Education Department to students who have already served a court-imposed sentence violates the U.S. Constitution’s ban on double jeopardy, criminally punishing someone twice for the same offense. But the appeals court said that the federal law’s sanctions cannot be considered criminally punitive, especially in the double-jeopardy context.

So refusing to grant federal aid for students caught smoking pot isn’t a criminal punishment, therefore, it is not double jeopardy.  OK, I guess technically speaking, that is true.  The student isn’t being fined, imprisoned, or put under probation.

But being told you lose your financial aid for school certainly is a punishment, after all, it is called the Higher Education Act Aid Elimination Penalty.  A penalty that is not meted out to any other type of criminal – murderers, rapists, arsonists, thieves, con artists, brawlers, embezzlers, traitors, and spies can all receive financial aid, but a pot smoker cannot.

Read the rest of this entry by clicking here

Related posts

• Stash for Mon, Aug 4, 2008 (0)
• Congress to vote tomorrow on changing student aid penalty to apply to drug sales only (1)
• Bill would restore financial aid for students convicted of marijuana possession only (1)