SSDP believes that drugs and drug policy are perhaps the biggest social problem facing our country. America has nearly 500,000 non-violent drug offenders in prison and African Americans make up 13% of the population, 13% of drug users, but 55% of those people convicted of drug crimes. Many judges and veteran law enforcement officials had declared they are fighting an un-winnable battle when drugs cannot even be kept out of our prisons, let alone off of our borders. What have we gained from the current approach: not a single drug-free high school. Purer drugs. More drugs. And billions of tax dollars wasted.

Along with millions of Americans, SSDP has come to the obvious conclusion, one that former Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey came to as well, that drug abuse is a public health issue. Our policy makers have tried the militant approaches to drug use that people like Rep. Mark Souder support, to no avail and that is why students came to Fort Wayne from hundreds of miles to say we have had enough.

The Higher Education Act Drug Provision is one of the best examples of the drug war run amuck at the expense of helping people improve there lives and, yes, get off drugs. With 20/20 hindsight it is obvious the HEA drug provision has gone too far, but Congressman Souder continues to deny it's his fault. He is a man who is blaming everyone but himself for a bad law he wrote. Souder blamed the Clinton administration in 2000 for not enforcing his law strictly enough. Now he is blaming the Bush administration for enforcing it too strictly. To the 64,000 students who have been told there is no money for college, none of this political finger pointing really matters.

Please do not believe Ms. Nalepka's lies; she has never phoned our office, nor has she even written us a letter, yet she claims to know so much about our organization. Reputable conservatives such as William F. Buckley have commended SSDP's efforts to bring about an open, honest, debate of our nation's drug policies. Republican Governor Gary Johnson sits on our Board of Advisors.

We at SSDP like a good debate, and welcome it, but Ms. Nalepka failed to respect the voices of the fastest growing student movement on campus when she wrote her op-ed, rather than attempting an intelligent, professional, discourse, which we would have welcomed. To accuse SSDP of militancy is an absurd accusation, especially coming from an individual who supports the most militant approach to drugs. We are the ones saying put down the guns, and please stop pointing them at our youth. So, you tell me, who are the militants? Visit our website as: http://www.ssdp.org -- read our materials, and join us in saying "No" to the tired, old drug warrior rhetoric and "Yes" to what makes sense: public health officials dealing with public health issues.

Students for Sensible Drug Policy is made up of students who are sincere young people with the purpose of moving our focus away from draconian approaches and towards more a human, common sense drug policy.

Complete Title: Who Is Responsible for 64,000 Students Losing an Education

Newshawk: anon
Source: Journal Gazette, The (IN)
Author: Shawn Heller, National Director of SSDP
Published: April 1, 2002
Copyright: 2002 The Journal Gazette
Contact: letters@jg.net
Website: http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/

Related Articles & Web Site:

Student's for Sensible Drug Policy
http://www.ssdp.org

Seeking Redemption for a Drug Law
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread12416.shtml

Applaud Souder's Efforts To Fight Illegal Drug Use
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread12330.shtml

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Which is why I think Nader did such a great thing in running for President. Sometimes the best way forward is to take a couple steps back. You have to push people over the edge to get them to act.

Which is why I think Nader did such a great thing in running for President. Sometimes the best way forward is to take a couple steps back. You have to push people over the edge to get them to act.

Enron Owns the GOPers
http://www.EnronOwnsTheGOP.com/
http://boards.marihemp.com/boards/politics/media/39/39716.gif

"The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes." - Benjamin Disraeli, first Prime Minister of England, in a novel he published in 1844 called "Coningsby, the New Generation"

Hypocrites All...
EVICT BUSH from PUBLIC HOUSING for Daughters Drug Use...
Click here...
http://www.rogerart.com/protes%20SUPRM%20CT%20EVICT%20BUSHt.htm

"Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States , in the Field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it." - Woodrow Wilson The New Freedom. (1913)

SUPREME COURT INJUSTICES... PROTEST
http://www.rogerart.com/protes%20SUPRM%20CT%20EVICT%20BUSHt.htm

"In March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding, and powder interest, and their subsidiary organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press... They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest papers... An agreement was reached; the policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month; an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers. - U.S. Congressman Oscar Callaway, 1917

Captain Kangaroo
http://boards.marihemp.com/boards/politics/media/40/40189.gif

The real menace of our republic is this invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy length over city, state and nation. Like the octopus of real life, it operates under cover of a self created screen....At the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as international bankers. The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both political parties." - New York City Mayor John F. Hylan, 1922

IEN-Indigenous Environmental Network Links
http://pub3.ezboard.com/fendingcannabisprohibitionorgs.showMessage?topicID=16.topic

"The real rulers in Washington are invisible, and exercise power from behind the scenes." - Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, 1952

Corporate Predators...
http://pub3.ezboard.com/fendingcannabisprohibitionorgs.showMessage?topicID=17.topic

"The Council on Foreign Relations is "the establishment." Not only does it have influence and power in key decision making positions at the highest levels of government to apply pressure from above, but it also announces and uses individuals and groups to bring pressure from below, to justify the high level decisions for converting the U.S. from a sovereign Constitutional Republic into a servile member state of a one world dictatorship." - Former Congressman John Rarick 1971

LAKOTA, HEMP, AND GLOBALIZATION
http://pub3.ezboard.com/fendingcannabisprohibitionorgs.showMessage?topicID=15.topic

"We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But, the work is now much more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries." - David Rockefeller, founder of the Trilateral Commission, in an address to a meeting of The Trilateral Commission, in June, 1991.

The Hypocrisy of the Peace Process
http://www.colombiareport.org/colombia103.htm
Plan Kentucky: How would we like it?
http://boards.marihemp.com/boards/politics/media/39/39940.gif

"In the next century, nations as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. National sovereignty wasn't such a great idea after all." - Strobe Talbot, Clinton's Deputy Secretary of State, as quoted in Time, July 20th, l992.

"All truth passes through 3 stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." -- Arthur Schopenhauer (where is Joyce?)

· "How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think." Adolf Hitler

"Most people, sometime in their lives, stumble across truth. Most jump up, brush themselves off, and hurry on about their business as if nothing had happened." - Sir Winston Churchill

Joyce, How many black people do we have to put in jail before we get white people to stop using drugs?

Reality is a crutch for those who can’t deal w/ drugs, Lilly Tomlin.

...I'll add that it also keeps one from passing that slightly higher intelligence on to successive generations.

64,000 kids...64,000 mainly middle class kids with no college and no prospect of it...64,000 kids with parents who have axes to grind...and are eyeing Souder's neck. 64,000 families who have just had cold water poured down their back, a fitting wake up call to what they soporifically supported ("DARE to keep kids off drugs!") having turned around and bitten them.

The laws meant to keep "those people" (Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians, as well as anyone else two tiers lower than their payscale) in line are now hurting little Johnnie and Suzy, who were caught doing what their parents got aawy with and didn't suffer for.

History repeats itself. When the children of my generation were being hurt by the drug laws, their parents began to demand the drug laws be reduced to more sensible levels. Thus the drug laws began to be changed towards decrim in the 1970's. But such 'child-savers' like Joyce, in their insanity of up-is-down, black-is-white, and laws equal total conformity to them, started the machinery that has created this latest and most visible DrugWarrior balls-up.

So, the children who benefited from lenient drug laws are now parents; parents who are having their children's future savaged by the Draconian laws they acquiesced to. The irony tastes bitter on the tongue. They are angry...they are infuriated...they are going ballistic...and we can tell them exactly who to blame for this mess, can't we? After all, none of us lobbied for those laws; people like Joyce did.

Can we introduce Mr. Fried to Ms. Nalepka?

No lasting effects -- even for those teenagers who smoked an average 37 joints a week for three years, say researchers

The Ottawa Citizen
Janice Tibbetts, The Ottawa Citizen
Tuesday, April 02, 2002
Copyright 2002 The Ottawa Citizen

Peter Fried, the Carleton psychologist who led the study, agrees marijuana needs to be decriminalized.

The notion that heavy marijuana smokers permanently fry their brains may be a myth, suggests a study by a team of psychologists at Carleton University.

By comparing IQ results of 70 young people, a third of whom were heavy cannabis users, the researchers found there were no lasting effects on intelligence -- even among people who smoked an average of 37 joints a week for three years in their teens.

The findings will be published today in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, the publication of the group that represents Canada's 50,000 doctors.

The study found that IQ scores dropped while the subjects were on their smoking sprees; but after they stopped, the numbers quickly bounced back to the intelligence levels of their pre-marijuana days.

The teens had smoked an average of 5,793 joints each over 3.2 years before they were tested for their smarts.

"This lack of a negative impact among former heavy users is striking," said Peter Fried, the Carleton psychologist who led the study.

The teens were first tested between the ages of nine and 12. They were tested again during the time they were smoking marijuana. A third IQ test was done three months after they had quit smoking dope.

"One can say if they have recovered at three months, that recovery is for real, as long as they don't start smoking again."

Worldwide, study results are split on the long-term effects of marijuana, which an estimated 1.5 million Canadians smoke for recreational purposes.

The novel element of the Carleton study is that it compared subjects with their own earlier IQ scores, unlike other studies that have compared dope smokers with non-smokers.

"The controversy about whether there have been long-term effects or not is roughly split down the middle," said Mr. Fried.

"To my mind, one of the major problems is not knowing how these folks were before they ever heard the word marijuana."

The Carleton researchers also waited several months to measure subjects after they quit smoking, while other studies have dealt with tests done only after a day or two of abstinence, Mr. Fried said.

The Carleton subjects were mainly from middle-class families in the Ottawa area. IQ tests showed that during their heavy smoking years, they dropped an average of four points below their scores of a decade earlier. The more they smoked, the more their results tumbled.

But Mr. Fried cautioned that his study does not deal with memory or attention, so it is not known whether his subjects will experience any long-term problems in those areas.

A controversial Australian study published last month suggested that heavy and chronic marijuana users suffer memory loss and attention problems that can affect their work, learning and life.

While Mr. Fried said he supports decriminalization of marijuana, he does not believe his study will necessarily help the growing movement.

"There's no question the laws have to be changed as far as decriminalization goes. I don't think there's any question about that," Mr. Fried said.

"But it's not an easy thing. Should pregnant women be forbidden or warned? If you had to fly, would you want your pilot to smoke up just beforehand? If not just beforehand, how long? Unlike alcohol, which has a rapid rate of getting out of the body, marijuana does not."

Mr. Fried said he was inspired to conduct his study after the Canadian Medical Association Journal, in an editorial last May, said there are minimal negative health effects of moderate marijuana use.

In fact, only heavy cannabis use was linked with decreases in IQ scores.; light and former use was linked with greater increases to IQ scores than no use at all!!!!!!!!! In fact, the increases in IQ due to light use were larger than the decreases due to heavy use. And the fact that former use leads to greater increases in IQ than no use at all suggests that even heavy use can contribute to higher thinking skills if such use is eventually terminated or cut back.

Here's a link to the press release on this story:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-04/cmaj-mio032802.php

Too bad the Canadian Press didn't see fit to report on the entire findings.

Dan B

So, the "smoke a joint, lose your college loan" law causes damage twice. First, it keeps people (ostensibly) from enjoying the benefit of a higher IQ through the occasional use of cannabis, and then it keeps people who have experienced its benefits from enhancing those benefits by obtaining a college education. Mark Souder (and everyone else who voted for the stupid law) has deliberately unleashed upon the people a law that further erodes the nation's intelligence. No surprise, really. That is really what he wanted in the first place when he came up with this stupid law.

Joyce IS the wall we crumble.

A Congress for a sensible drug policy,

A President for a sensible drug policy,

A Supreme Court for a sensible drug policy,

A sensible government for a sensible drug policy.

It's really not asking for too much.

By the way, who is paying for all of this drug war business?