STUDENT DRUG TESTING BAD IDEA

Your Turn

It is sadly ironic that Republicans, whose party once championed less
government intrusion in our lives, now give us House Bill 81, that would
impose mandatory drug testing of students in 6th through 12th grade who
pursue extracurricular school activity. Drug testing generally requires the
person subjected to the test urinate in a cup with someone standing nearby
to oversee the procedure and to take the sample away for testing.

As written, HB81 provides no confidentiality protections to prevent test
results from being disclosed to third parties. And, the bill does not
specify what exactly a lab examining a urine sample will be looking for.
Nothing in HB81 would prevent someone from peeking into your child's urine
to check for a disease, AIDS, or genetic problems, then releasing the
results to others who might find the information useful. False positive
results, which are highly prevalent in urine drug testing, could forever
mar a child's record, reputation, self-confidence and trust. In this age
where our personal information is sold every day and hackers violate the
sanctity of protected computer databases, we can never safeguard a drug
test result from electronic tampering or theft.

HB81 constitutes a particularly steep slippery slope down which our
personal liberties are sliding. As an attorney, I concur with the legal
experts who have concluded that HB81 as written will fail to survive a
legal challenge, which is inevitable if the bill passes. The founding
fathers of this nation never dreamed that Americans would ever consider,
let alone propose, selling out our children's right to privacy in exchange
for their being allowed to throw a ball on the school team. What's next —
government asking little kindergartners to pull down their pants and
urinate on demand with the lure of a lollipop to entice them? Our personal
freedoms cannot be sacrificed to the auction block for any price, and we
cannot countenance the government violating the rights of those least able
to defend themselves.

This outrage will not stop with our children. Perhaps next time, the
Legislature will require the rest of us to undergo drug testing in exchange
for our social security benefits and paychecks. We may dismiss this
uncomfortable prospect by saying that only those who are guilty would fear
a drug test. On the contrary, were someone to oppose or refuse a drug test
on legitimate legal grounds, they would certainly be exposed to ridicule
and suspicion.

The proponents of HB81 are well-intentioned, I am sure. However, there are
more effective and less intrusive means of accomplishing the goal of drug
use prevention than this bill provides. HB81 does little more than sanction
the harassment and humiliation of students whose high sense of leadership,
responsibility, personal excellence and self-sacrifice compels them to
participate in extracurricular school functions. Forcing our children to
submit to the indignity of governmental scrutiny of their bodily fluids is
an obscene trespass we must not tolerate.