LAKE STEVENS HIGH SCHOOL'S DRUG TESTS RAN AFOUL OF THE LAW

Lake Stevens High School stops random drug tests for athletics and
other activities.

The era of random drug testing at Lake Stevens High School is
over.

The school board voted unanimously to end the controversial program
this week. The school was one of just a few in the state to randomly
test students who participated in sports and other extracurricular
activities.

The school suspended drug testing in March when the Washington
Supreme Court ruled that testing student athletes for drugs is
unconstitutional.

Lake Stevens High School plans to continue offering drug testing to
students who volunteer to be tested and whose parents agree, district
spokeswoman Arlene Hulten said.

"We didn't have any options," school board member Janice Thompson
said. "Because of the ruling that came down from the courts, we could
not keep our policy the way it was."

Many school administrators and board members believed that random
drug testing motivated students to stay away from drugs.

Since drug testing was instituted at the school in October 2006, 10
of the 500 students to submit urine samples tested positive for
drugs. Students who tested positive continued to attend classes, but
faced a 23-day suspension from their extracurricular activity. They
were required to seek assessment of their drug use and to enroll in a
treatment program if that was recommended.

The day after the Washington Supreme Court ruled against drug testing
in schools, some Lake Stevens students celebrated with a party that
involved underage drinking, said Thompson, who has two children at
Lake Stevens High School.

"I do believe it gives them the opportunity to say, 'No, I'm not
willing to risk either being taken out of a sports program or a music
program,'" she said.

Around 4,100 schools across the country use random drug tests, said
Stephen Shatz, spokesman for the White House Office of National Drug
Control Policy. The office is studying drug tests' effectiveness at
preventing teen drug use.

"If schools and communities feel this is a need and their schools and
communities want to pursue local drug testing, they should," he said.

In some schools with voluntary drug testing programs, 90 percent of
the students agree to be tested, Shatz said. Some schools use a
random system, but students can opt not to be tested if their names
are selected. He hadn't heard of members of entire school teams
volunteering together for testing.

It's unclear how the Lake Stevens program will work.

Incoming freshman Karlee Wilcox can't imagine many students
volunteering for drug tests.

She was glad the school board decided to stop random drug testing at
the high school. Wilcox, who wants to participate in dance or
cheerleading, doesn't believe drug tests would keep most students
from doing drugs.

"I'm for 'Don't do drugs,' but I just don't think people I know would
really care" about testing, she said.

Senior Jessica Danielson has mixed feelings about the board's
decision. Without a movie theater or an arcade in town, many Lake
Stevens students turn to drugs out of boredom, she said.

"For students who are participating in school sports, it would be a
wise idea to continue drug testing if the parents agree to it because
you don't want to be competing against someone who's on drugs or
steroids when you're not," said Danielson, who hasn't been tested.
"But totally random testing is, in my opinion, stupid."

The Washington lawsuit was filed by parents of three Wahkiakum High
School athletes in southwest Washington. Their students were randomly
selected for drug tests in school. The American Civil Liberties Union
of Washington provided lawyers for the parents.

The court unanimously ruled that warrantless, random and
suspicionless drug testing of student athletes violates the
Washington State Constitution.

ACLU spokesman Doug Honig was glad to hear that Lake Stevens has
abandoned random testing.

"It's a sensible decision and it's what we would have expected
because the State Supreme Court's ruling was very clear that testing
students in a public school without suspicion violates their rights,"
he said.

The Lake Stevens district plans to continue testing students at its
alternative Prove High School for drug use as a condition of
enrollment. Because testing is not random at Prove, it isn't affected
by the court decision, Hulten said.