SCHOOL DRUG TESTING PRAISED; PRINCIPAL APPLAUDS VOLUNTARY PROGRAM

After carefully weaving around potential legal, political and financial
snags, Frederick A. Douglass Senior High School Principal Vincent Nzinga
believes his first-of-its-kind drug testing program is transforming the New
Orleans school he took over three years ago.

"On my first walk through the hallways, it reeked of marijuana," he said.
"I actually saw one guy smoking a joint."

This year, "I've had a number of teachers this year say they can see a
difference in the students, a change in the attitude, a change in the
culture," he said.

In one of the more creative responses to the U.S. Supreme Court's view that
mandatory random drug testing at schools violates constitutional
prohibitions, Nzinga is screening about 500 of his 1,200 students through a
voluntary, privately financed hair-testing program. Six students have
tested positive, for either marijuana or cocaine, Nzinga said. The tests,
paid for by an anonymous donor, are expected to cost about $160,000 over
two years.

Nzinga and other drug-testing advocates from local private schools -- who
can test all students without fear of lawsuit -- met to present model
policies at a small conference last week, held at John McDonogh Senior High
School and spearheaded by New Orleans District Attorney Harry Connick, a
strident advocate for school drug testing.

Many schools test athletes or students in extracurricular activities, a
narrow exception courts have allowed. But Connick and others are pushing
for every school, public and private, to test every student.

So far, Douglass and nine local private schools have extensive testing
programs, Connick said, though others have expressed interest.

Yvonne Gelpi, president of De La Salle high school in Uptown New Orleans,
was the first to institute hair-testing three years ago. The improvement in
student attitudes and behavior since then has been striking, she said. The
students were warned, and just 3 percent tested positive the first time
out, she said. That figure dropped to less than 1 percent last year.

She urged others to disregard lawsuit-filing civil libertarians and push
forward.

Hair-testing, Connick's drug test of choice, can provide a detailed record
of drug use dating back three months, including when, how much and what
kind of drugs were used, said representatives of Pyschemedics Corporation,
which has patented and markets the pricey tests worldwide.

Pyschemedics attorney William Thistle said science is flawless; any bad
results stem from human errors that can be easily accounted for with a
second, more conclusive test.

With such safeguards, he said, "There are no false positives."

But the Food and Drug Administration, which has given its blessing to urine
tests, has yet to sign off on hair-testing. "We've yet to see any
scientific proof that it's valid," an FDA spokeswoman said later in a phone
interview.

Some are a bit more frank. Psychemedics officials are "absolutely full of
crap," Daniel Abrahamson, legal director for the libertarian-leaning Drug
Policy Foundation, said in a phone interview. "They have a lot of money to
make on hair-testing. There are many, many studies that say hair-testing
just has not achieved reliability in a scientific context."

Urine tests, which can detect most hard drugs for a short period after they
are used, are sufficiently valid, Abrahamson said, but only after 30 years
of perfecting the tests and several successful lawsuits by people who were
wrongly branded drug users.

Outside of test validity issues, Abrahamson, who monitors drug-testing
litigation nationwide, believe that Douglass High is on solid legal ground
because the tests are voluntary, and not punitive. Students testing
positive aren't disciplined, Nzinga said, but rather referred to drug
treatment. At Douglass, parents have for the most part been supportive, he
said.

"We did a survey during the first week of school and the vast majority of
parents agreed," Nzinga said. "The majority of students in the school don't
want to be involved with drugs."