"Dear Rick Boucher,
As your constituent, I'm writing to urge you to make sure that the penalty that strips financial aid from college students with drug convictions is repealed through the Higher Education Act reauthorization. Since the aid elimination penalty was added as an amendment to HEA in 1998, nearly 200,000 aspiring students have been blocked access to educational assistance, often for relatively minor offenses such as possession of small amounts of marijuana.
While the penalty is supposed to keep young people away from drugs, it actually does the opposite by kicking at-risk students out of school. But blocking access to education doesn't just hurt the students directly impacted it has harmful implications for society as a whole. College graduates are much more likely to become successful taxpaying citizens, while those who are kicked out of school are more likely to abuse drugs, become costly drains on the criminal justice system, and rely on expensive government assistance programs.
Furthermore, since students already have to make good academic progress to receive financial aid, the penalty only affects hardworking students who are doing well in their classes. As for students who are causing problems and disrupting the learning process for others, college administrators already have the authority to expel them, and judges have long had the ability to revoke student aid from people with drug convictions on a case-by-case basis. The one-size-fits-all penalty strips discretion from decision-makers who know students best. Numerous addiction recovery, criminal justice, religious, and other leaders have insisted that education is one of the best means to reduce crime and drug abuse, and Congress's own Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance recommended removing the drug conviction question from the aid application, calling it "irrelevant" to eligibility.
Even the Bush administration doesn't like the penalty; the Undersecretary of Education recently testified to a House subcommittee that the drug question is "not anything that we need at the department." Fortunately, this year's HEA reauthorization process presents a great opportunity to get rid of the harmful and unfair penalty once and for all. Please help tens of thousands of hardworking and determined individuals get back into school and on the path to success by making sure that the HEA bill includes language repealing the aid elimination penalty. Thanks for your attention to this important issue. I look forward to hearing your thoughts as soon as you have a chance to share them."
Tell Congress to help on this issue: http://capwiz.com/mobilize//issues/alert/?alertid=10094061
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Message to Congress about the Financial Aid Penalty
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Tom's Message to Congress About the Drug Czar
"Dear Director John P. Walters,
As a taxpaying American citizen, I'm outraged to learn that under your leadership, the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) used my hard-earned dollars to travel across the country campaigning for embattled Republican Congressional candidates in 2006. Your office is charged with addressing the serious issue of substance abuse in a sensible way, but you've instead abused your power for partisan political purposes, wholly neglecting the responsibilities that have been entrusted to you.
That's why the Senate Appropriations Committee moved last year to cut ONDCP's salaries in half, citing your office's "lethargy," "unresponsiveness" to Congressional appropriators, and "unnecessary waste of time and energy." The new evidence of your potentially illegal campaigning is just the latest in a long line of embarrassing and outrageous activities ONDCP has engaged in under your watch:
* You've spent taxpayer money to campaign and lobby against citizen ballot initiatives and state legislation that would reform aspects of the ineffective War on Drugs.
* You've attempted to prevent Congress and the public from gaining access to a scientific evaluation of your "anti-drug" advertising campaign because you didn't like the results showing that the ads actually cause more, not less, teen drug use. Despite these alarming results, you've kept the dangerous ads on the air.
* You've spent millions of dollars a year spraying poisonous chemicals on the jungles and fields of Colombia in a failed effort to eradicate coca crops and prevent cocaine from entering or country. Yet while continuing to publicly advocate this eradication program, you admitted in a private letter to Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) that cocaine prices on America's streets are dropping and its purity is increasing.
* You've actively pushed for the continued federal criminalization of seriously ill Americans suffering from cancer, AIDS, and multiple sclerosis who use medical marijuana with their doctors' recommendations, even where it is legal under state law. In an affront to federalism and states' rights, ONDCP and the Food and Drug Administration released a politicized statement last year criticizing states with medical marijuana laws.
The problems associated with drug abuse and drug prohibition are too important to take a back seat to your ideological agenda and partisan politics. I therefore call on you to immediately resign your position as director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy."
