Approximately 43,000 otherwise qualified students this year will be denied for federal financial aid because they have a history of drug use. 100,000 students have already been turned down for loans and aid since the Higher Education Reform Act Drug Provision passed in 1998.

It wasn’t until the Bush administration began a policy of strict enforcement of the act, systematically denying any federal aid for education to anyone with a drug conviction, that the issue really came to the spotlight, and has met with heated opposition from groups such as the Students for Sensible Drug Policy.

Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) reintroduced a bill Feb. 13, dubbed HR 685, that would repeal the Drug Provision of the Higher Education Act, and it is gaining support.

Critics of the Drug Provision argue that being convicted of a drug offense should not bar students from earning an education and bettering themselves. Groups such as the SSDP claim the provision is harmful and counterproductive.

Arguments are numerous. Students who have been denied aid feel they have been punished twice, once when arrested and sentenced, and again when they applied for financial aid.

Frank says that law is targeted at poor students. He stated that the bill does not bar admission to college, only student aid, and therefore “…by definition it only applies to lower-income people.”

Civil rights groups have accused the act of racism. “Blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately targeted, arrested, and convicted of drug offenses,” according to Wade Henderson of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. “Therefore, a policy that denies financial aid to people with drug convictions has a racially discriminatory impact.”

The strict enforcement policy of the Bush campaign has even drawn disapproval from the bills original author, Mark Souder (R-Ind). He said the bill was not intended to keep students from entering college, but to deny loans from students who are convicted while receiving aid.

He stated, “I feel bad about this situation. I’m an Evangelical Christian…One of the things I fundamentally believe is that people can change.”

Supporters of the repeal also ad that the bill denies aid to drug offenders, but does not affect rapists, murderers, etc.

Until this matter is voted on in the 107th Congress, groups such as the SSDP, which is planning over a hundred rallies on college campuses this spring, will continue lobbying for HR 685.