Only Predatory Criminals Need Apply

Students for a Sensible Drug Policy (in a press release that's not online yet) reports that the House Committee on Education and the Workforce has approved legislation that would let college students who have been convicted of drug offenses obtain federal financial aid, largely reversing a ban that has been in effect since 1998. (Because the committee rejected an amendment that would have completely eliminated the ban, students who commit drug offenses after entering college would still be dropped from the program.) Although the expansion of taxpayer-funded education subsidies is not exactly cause for celebration, it's hard to justify denying aid to pot smokers while giving it to rapists and murderers, a policy that epitomizes the upside-down moral logic of the war on drugs.