WAHKIAKUM SCHOOL DISTRICT'S ATHLETE DRUG TESTING PROGRAM HEADS TO
STATE SUPREME COURT

The nearly eight-year legal battle over Wahkiakum School District's
program to randomly drug test student athletes will reach the
Washington Supreme Court next month.

The court agreed earlier this month to review a Wahkiakum Superior
Court ruling that upheld the drug-testing program as constitutional.
Oral arguments in the case are scheduled for March 8, 10 or 15.

"This is an interesting issue, and we're on the cutting edge of the
law here," said Wahkiakum County Deputy Prosecutor Dan Bigelow, who
is representing the school district. "Our position is that the
superior court made the correct decision."

The district adopted the policy in October 1999, saying attempts to
curb widespread drug use through other intervention programs wasn't
working. Two Wahkiakum families with students in public school teamed
up with the American Civil Liberties Union to sue the district,
saying the policy is an unconstitutional breach of privacy.

Officials started randomly testing athletes last fall following the
Superior Court ruling in favor or the district last summer.

Since drug testing resumed, roughly 50 middle- and high-school
student athletes have been tested, and one student tested positive
for illegal drug use, Wahkiakum School District Superintendent Bob
Garrett said last week.

Students who fail the test can't participate in sports for one full
season. A second offense makes them intelligible for one year of
sports, and a third offense means they can't play sports at all for
the school district. Each Monday, district officials draw the names
of one middle school and two high school athletes. Those students are
escorted during the school day to the health department, where they
take a urine test.

Wahkiakum resident Cindy Fudge, a mother of three students and coach
of Wahkiakum High School's girls' softball team, said she believes
the district's drug-testing program keeps students on their toes and
prepares them for drug tests many of them will undergo for future employment.

Students will most likely get drug-tested for future jobs, anyway, Fudge said.

"It teaches that if you break these rules, life has consequences," she said.

The policy also give teens an easy out when peers pressure them to
use drugs, Fudge added, "instead of 'my mommy and daddy would get mad.' "

Fudge said she value constitutional rights, but "what privacy do you
need when it's illegal and it's underage?"

Fudge's eighth-grader, Brandon, has been tested for drugs twice since
last fall.

"I don't have any problems with it," said Brandon, who plays football
and basketball for Wahkiakum Middle School. "They give you your
privacy." Fudge's 10th-grade son, Joel, said feelings about drug
testing are mixed among the high school athletes he knows. He was
tested once during wrestling season. If anything, drug testing should
be expanded to other extracurricular activities -- not just sports, Joel said.

"They should be tested, too. It's not like it's any less illegal for them."

Wahkiakum High senior Toby David, who participates in basketball,
football and track, also thinks that athletes shouldn't be singled out.

"I think everyone in the whole school should be tested," said David,
who has yet to be tested. "I think it's only fair."

David said he understands the constitutional arguments against random
drug testing, but that he doesn't object to the district's policy.

"Most of our athletes are clean, so it's not really a problem with
us," David said.

Superintendent Garret and Principal Davis said school officials said
parents are, by and large, not complaining about the policy.

"Things are pretty calm here. ... It has just become a matter of course."

School officials will examine data from the Healthy Youth Survey --
conducted every two years -- to gauge the impact of the drug program,
Wahkiakum High School Principal Loren Davis said. Results to the 2006
survey, which students took in October, should be released sometime
next month. The general sentiment among school officials is that the
program appears to be "fulfilling its purpose," Davis added.

Seattle ACLU spokesman Doug Honig says random drug testing does not
keep students from using illegal drugs. Schools should set policy
based on what will work, not what the public thinks will work, Honig said.

According to a University of Michigan study released in 2005, drug
testing did not deter drug use in the nation's high and middle
schools. Researchers surveyed 891 secondary schools between 1998 and
2002 and found "virtually identical rates of drug use in the schools
that have drug testing and the schools that do not."

"The Bill of Rights and the state constitution is never a matter of a
popularity contest. It's a matter of protecting individual rights,
even if a majority of the people see otherwise," Honig said.

"The U.S. and Washington state constitutions protect individual
people's privacy rights unless there is a good reason to suspect they
are doing something wrong," he added. "If we didn't have the Fourth
Amendment to the Bill of Rights, governments could search people's
homes any time they wanted."