STUDENT DRUG TESTING IS NO 'SILVER BULLET' The Office of National Drug Control Policy descends upon San Diego today to host the second of four "summits" around the country promoting random student drug testing. With drug czar John Walters dubbing the program a "silver bullet," enthusiastic conference presenters will no doubt sound as though they have the definitive plan for preventing teen drug use. Backed with a federal budget of more than $9 million and looking for a quick fix to a complicated problem, the push is on. As the mother of four, a National Institute on Drug Abuse scholar, and director of a drug education project for parents of teens, I urge San Diego's educators and parents to be wary of "feel good" promises and to proceed with extreme caution when it comes to student drug testing, as it may be doing more harm than good. Consider the very real pitfalls: Random drug testing has not been proven to deter drug use. In 2003, the National Institute on Drug Abuse funded the largest study ever conducted on the topic. Seasoned researchers compared 76,000 students in schools with and without a drug testing program. They found no differences in illegal drug use among students from both sets of schools. Urine testing, the most common and inexpensive form of drug testing, is invasive and alienating. The collection of a specimen is a humiliating violation of privacy, especially embarrassing for an adolescent. Testing can, therefore, have the unanticipated effect of keeping students from participating in after-school, extracurricular programs - activities that would fill their time during the peak teenage drug-using hours from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Random testing also can infuse an insidious sense of suspicion into the delicate student-teacher relationship, which contributes to a hostile school environment. This is particularly troubling in light of research showing the strong correlation between school connectedness and student success. Drug testing is expensive. School districts across the country, including many in Southern California, are in financial crisis. With costs ranging between $10 and $75 per test, per student, even with federal subsidies, schools simply cannot afford to spend thousands of dollars each year for a program of questionable effectiveness while valuable extracurricular programs struggle to survive. Then there are the problems associated with maintaining confidentiality and school districts' legal liability in cases, for example, of false positives or breaches of confidentiality. Testing is inefficient when it comes to detecting drug problems. Though it may provide a false sense of security among school officials and parents, testing detects only a tiny fraction of users and misses too many who might be in trouble. The National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence cautions that the risk of testing students for illicit drugs, "will be understood (as a) signal that alcohol and tobacco are of lesser danger." Indeed, alcohol is the overwhelming drug of choice for high school students, and the most dangerous. The vast majority of drug testing programs do not test for alcohol. Even if schools incurred the additional cost, since alcohol is undetectable in bodily fluids within a few hours, a student could easily "tie one on" on Saturday night and still test negative by Monday morning. The notion that students need drug testing to help them say "no," is questionable. The 2005 "State of Our Nation's Youth" survey found that, contrary to popular belief, most teens are not pressured to use drugs. Instead, they are influenced by their parents, with whom 75 percent say they have a good relationship. For this reason, last year the 1-million-member California State PTA joined both the state Senate and the Assembly in opposing random, suspicionless drug testing in California schools. "As parents, we're certainly concerned about addressing issues of student drug abuse," said spokeswoman Kathy Moffat in a July 2004 Los Angeles Times article, "but a random drug-testing program implies there is no trust." Random drug testing may seem a panacea, but it is fraught with social, emotional and financial problems. If we are truly intent on helping students, we should listen to drug-abuse professionals who know that detection of problems requires careful attention to signs such as truancy, erratic behavior and falling grades. Those in decision-making roles would be wise to listen to physicians such as Dr. Howard Taras of the UCSD School of Medicine, member of the American Academy of Pediatrics and chief medical consultant of the San Diego Unified School District: "Any school currently operating a drug screening program must also have a scrupulous evaluation of the program's potential benefits and of the program's potential harms. Only results of such careful evaluations can and should guide parents and school administrators to do what's best for our youth." Before we leap into a program that uses students as guinea pigs, we should examine the many repercussions, pitfalls and alternatives to random drug testing. There simply is no "silver bullet."
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