Don't press your pot luck

Thirty years ago is a hot-button for politics this year. What someone did or didn't do during the Vietnam War. What someone said or didn't say at an anti-war rally. What someone did or did not smoke in a college dormitory.\nAs for Indiana politics, there isn't much relevance to the recent news that Democratic Gov. Joe Kernan and Republican challenger Mitch Daniels, both vying for the Indiana governor's mansion this fall, smoked pot in their youth. \nCountless others have done the same. Countless others will do the same. In fact, we should brace ourselves for the next few years, for more tales of youthful indiscretion, as most of our current politicians are Baby Boomers who came of age in the 1960s and '70s. And we all know what that means. (In 30 to 50 years, people our age who run for political office probably will be quizzed over whether or not they ever used Ecstasy.)\nAnd while their past histories with drugs are irrelevant, it is relevant where the current candidates stand in issues relating to the drug policies of America and the state of Indiana and how they affect young people.\nIt is relevant that many of our jails are becoming overcrowded with first-time, non-violent drug offenders.\nIt is relevant that the same youthful indiscretions politicians brush aside today are becoming encrypted on permanent records.\nIt is relevant to consider if we will ever consider drug addiction and drug problems to be catalogued as public health issues and whether we will ever consider full rehabilitation a preferred alternative to harsh sentencing.\nIt is relevant to consider how the drug war affects different communities in America, because it affects us all differently.\nHow federal drug policies affect Indiana college students is also incredibly relevant. In an Indiana Daily Student article that ran Aug. 30, a national coalition based in Washington, D.C., is calling upon Gov. Joe Kernan and Mitch Daniels to support a full repeal of the Higher Education Act drug provision, which suspends federal aid eligibility to students convicted under federal or state law of possession or sale of drugs.\nThe current federal drug provision is slanted. It can prevent people from applying who think perhaps they will receive no aid. It can unjustly punish students who need assistance to stay in college, while other students who can afford to be in college without financial assistance may encounter similar penalties for drug convictions but will not lose their collegiate funding. Rather than allowing students to remain in college to improve lives, it can cut their life paths off. \nSteep state budget cuts, escalating corrections costs, prison overcrowding and the growing movement for sentencing reform will affect states, including ours, for years to come. This election should address many of these issues and how we can more properly, more effectively reform our war on drugs.