COURT WRONG ON DRUG TESTING

Regarding John Donald O'Shea's Feb. 11 op-ed, the U.S. Supreme Court
made a terrible mistake when it created an exemption to the
Constitutional and ruled in favor of allowing drug tests for students
in extracurricular activities.

Student involvement in after-school activities like sports has been
shown to reduce drug use. They keep kids busy during the hours they
are most likely to get into trouble. Forcing students to undergo
degrading urine tests as a prerequisite will only discourage participation.

Drug testing may also compel marijuana users to switch to harder
drugs to avoid testing positive. Despite a short-lived high,
marijuana is the only illegal drug that stays in the human body long
enough to make urinalysis a deterrent. Marijuana's organic
metabolites are fat-soluble and can linger for days. More dangerous
synthetic drugs like methamphetamine and prescription pharmaceuticals
are water-soluble and exit the body quickly.

If you think drug users don't know this, think again. Anyone capable
of running an Internet search can find out how to thwart a drug test.
Drug testing profiteers do not readily volunteer this information,
for obvious reasons. The most commonly abused drug and the one most
closely associated with violent behavior is almost impossible to
detect with urinalysis.

That drug is alcohol, and it takes far more student lives each year
than all illegal drugs combined. Instead of wasting money on
counterproductive drug tests, schools should invest in reality-based
drug education.

Robert Sharpe is a policy analyst with Common Sense for Drug Policy
in Washington, D.C.; www.csdp.org