PotShot

Schools consider drug tests
Associated Press | ColumbiaTribune.com | January 28, 2006

TOWN AND COUNTRY (AP) - The young men walking the halls at Christian Brothers College High School in suburban St. Louis couldn’t look more clean-cut than they do in their school-sanctioned collared shirts and dress pants.

But administrators here - looking to move beyond appearances - are proposing a mandatory drug testing program to make sure all of the private school’s 1,100 students are drug-free.

"I know a lot of people are worried about privacy concerns, but they’re telling us it’ll be kept confidential," said junior Tommy Daher, 17, of Manchester. Randomly selected students who test positive will be given help to get off drugs and asked to leave school if they fail a second time.

"I think it’s great that we’ll be leading the way in this," Tommy said.

Like CBC, schools around the nation have been trying to determine what’s helpful, and what’s over the line, when it comes to testing children for drugs.

There’s a move in many public schools to drug-test athletes or students involved in extracurricular activities. Schools testing for steroids are on the rise, after increased attention about the use of performance-enhancing drugs in professional sports.

There are voluntary programs where middle schoolers agree to stay drug-free and take part in testing.

School drug tests are hailed as an effective drug-fighting tool by the White House but called unhelpful by a civil liberties group.

Private schools have more leeway to set their own policies, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that schools can conduct random drug testing on middle and high school students who participate in competitive extracurricular activities. Then, President George W. Bush voiced support of student drug testing in his 2004 State of the Union address, helping to fuel interest, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy said.

"I think it’s a clear tool not to play hide-and-seek with this problem," said the White House office’s director, John Walters. He has heard of roughly one school district or private school a week starting some form of random drug testing since last spring. He did not know of any public schools attempting mandatory testing of all its students, as some private schools are doing.

Walters said drug testing in schools is no substitute for parenting and educational programs but helps prevent students who aren’t using drugs from trying them and aids schools in identifying students who are on drugs in order to get them assistance.

"I don’t think drug testing is helpful in any schools, even in private schools where there are not the same legal obstacles," Graham Boyd, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Drug Law Reform Project based in Santa Cruz, Calif., said yesterday.

The tests interfere with school officials’ ability to build relationships based on trust with students, he said. They might reinforce for a student not using drugs that they’re "in the right place," but Graham said he hasn’t seen that they help students on drugs or who are looking to try them.

The tests raise privacy issues and concerns about the fairness of certain types of tests, he said.

Christian Brothers College High School is still hearing from parents about whether they favor the change, but other schools founded by the same religious order have similar programs and like what they’ve seen. St. Patrick High School in Chicago said 11 students tested positive once for drugs last year, but just one student tested positive twice.

"The purpose of this is not to catch kids. It’s not to be punitive. It’s to help kids," said Brother David Poos, principal of CBC, which was founded in 1850.

If testing moves forward, about 15 students a day will be randomly selected for testing at the start of an academic year until the entire student body has been checked. Random tests will continue during the year. A section of hair about an inch and a half long will be cut from a student’s head and sent to an outside business to check for use of marijuana, cocaine, PCP, ecstacy, methamphetamines and opiates.

If a student tests positive, a school official will meet with the student and his parents to discuss treatment options and how the student can get off drugs. Findings will not be placed on a student’s permanent record.

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Carl Sagan Goodness Richard Dawkins Goodness