FEDS TO RELEASE STUDENT DRUG USE DATA

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Department of Education has agreed to release
a demographic breakdown of the 200,000 students denied federal aid
due to drug convictions, settling a lawsuit filed last month by the
advocacy group Students for a Sensible Drug Policy.

"This is a huge victory," said Tom Angell, SSDP's campaigns director.
"We're very excited."

The settlement is the latest development in the group's campaign to
rescind a law that prevents students with drug convictions from
receiving federal aid.

Under a 1998 provision added to the Higher Education Act, students
who have been convicted for the illegal sale or possession of drugs
under state or federal law can be declared ineligible to receive
student financial aid, according to the government's federal student
aid Web site.

About a year ago, SSDP requested under the Freedom of Information Act
that the Department of Education release a "state-by-state breakdown"
of students denied aid, according to a statement by SSDP Executive
Director Kris Krane.

The Department of Education initially asked SSDP to pay $4,000 for
the information, but the federal agency agreed to waive the fee when
the student group threatened to challenge it in court.

The Department of Education declined to comment on the settlement.

"The government thought they could intimidate us ... they had no
other choice but to give [us the information]," Angell said.

But another lawsuit, which remains to be decided, challenges the
constitutionality of the drug-conviction amendment to the Higher Education Act.

The provision, amended by Congress in January of this year, applies
only to students who were convicted while receiving federal aid.

The undecided lawsuit, filed in February by SSDP and the American
Civil Liberties Union, said that the drug provision "interferes with
the objectives of drug treatment, drug prevention and criminal
rehabilitation by denying a higher education -- and its attendant
economic benefits -- to those convicted of drug offenses."

The lawsuit, which cites three examples of upstanding college
students denied federal aid because of their drug convictions,
declares the law to be unconstitutional for violating the
Constitution's "double jeopardy" and "due process" clauses, and asks
that the Department of Education cease denying federal aid to these
students. Leaders of SSDP said that they plan to use the demographic
information on student drug violators denied aid, which the
government said it will release before the end of March, to argue for
repealing the Higher Education Act's drug provision.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and 69 cosponsors recently introduced a
bill in Congress that would rescind the drug provision.

"After we have received the information from the Department of
Education, we're going to have to go to Congress to show them how
much this law affects their own constituents," Angell said. "The
government is on notice now that students won't allow them to cover [this] up."