With the Higher Education Act up for reauthorization this year, lawmakers have a chance to repeal the misguided 1998 provision that denies federal financial aid to students with prior drug convictions. The provision, which asks students on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid if they have ever been convicted of “”selling or possessing drugs,”” has resulted in thousands of denied grants and loans over the last five years.

Drafted in the crime and punishment spirit of the War on Drugs, the provision ignores the fact that education is perhaps the most effective deterrent to drug abuse. Since the provision’s inception, over 100 student governments have voiced opposition, while several universities have nobly pledged to reimburse students who were denied aid because of a drug offense.

Penalizing students for a conviction that they have already settled in court is erroneous and ineffective. Not only does the law punish students for the same offense twice, it hinges financial aid on a number of ulterior socioeconomic factors well beyond the scope of academia ‹ namely, who is arrested on drug charges.

Despite improvement since the 1990s, the rate of black juveniles arrested for drugs remained almost twice that of white juveniles in 2001, according to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

As President Jimmy Carter told Congress in 1977, “”Penalties against drug use should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself.”” The 1998 HEA provision is such a penalty and should be repealed.