War on Drugs won't end until people stand up in communities

To the Editor:

The Review is right that Student Life can't directly change national drug laws, and action directed at Washington is necessary. I think any close examination of our nation's drug policy will reveal it to be futile and unjust, racist and destructive of our civil liberties. It is surely incumbent upon us all to try to end this destructive program. But I think the Review makes a serious error in claiming that local activity is futile or counterproductive.

We've often heard the activist credo "think globally, act locally" and it is applicable here. To a great extent, the Oberlin community can effect the institution's behavior, by our action or our inaction. Apologists for Student Life in the past few weeks have mentioned federal laws constraining the College's behavior in the area of drug policy. Yet, I have talked to several students who met with Dean Cole-Newkirk to discuss Oberlin's drug policy, and in none of their discussions did Dean Cole ever mention such constraints as a motivation. Instead, she mentioned Oberlin's "serious drug problem", and the harmful effects of many drugs. And some drugs are potentially harmful, but a punitive approach to drug use has proven to be itself greatly harmful to our rights, our communities and our society, while doing nothing to ameliorate the harm of drugs.

The timing of Oberlin's movement to an emphasis on punishment is painfully ironic. We maintained a reasonable and intelligent drug policy throughout the 1980s, years of increasingly insane assaults on our rights and communities in the name of drug enforcement. Only now, when such as the National Review and C. Everett Koop are speaking out against the war on drugs, the institution apparently feels the civic duty to enforce drug laws with a program of punishment rather then education and prevention. Even the newly appointed "drug czar", General Barry McCaffrey, was quoted in the March 17 NYT [New York Times]saying that law enforcement is "not how we're going to solve the problem. We need treatment, prevention." Oberlin has acted according to those principles for years. The question is why Dean Cole and President Dye now feel it necessary to change this emphasis.

Some now refer to the "drug exception to the Bill of Rights", and we are similarly seeing our rights of privacy, due process, free speech and security eroded in the name of drug enforcement at Oberlin. When Residential Life evicts a person from his room before/without a hearing because of the so-called "emergency" of possible "controlled substance odors" emanating from his room, this attack on due process should concern all students, and rightly motivate local action and activism.

It is the connection of the local and global that both makes this a serious issue with global consequences, and motivates local action in our community. Writing letters to Washington won't hurt, but the war on drugs will not end until enough people stand up in their local communities and refuse to put up with injustice in the name of drug enforcement.