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."