SCHOOL DRUG-TESTING IS MISGUIDED

Branson School Board Follows Disturbing Trend.

Imagine this scenario:

A troubled young man confides in a teacher or counselor at Branson
High School that he has a drug problem. The teenager needs focus and
is directed to apply his enthusiasm to the world of athletics.
Following the guidance, the young man tries out for the football team.
He excels. His grades improve. He's turning his life around.

A few weeks later he's administered a school-approved random drug
test.

He fails. He's suspended. He gives up on football. His grades drop.
He's lost.

This is but one of the many possible scenarios that cause us to oppose
the new drug testing program approved by Branson school officials this
week. We realize we're in the minority. The vote on the school board
was unanimous. There was hardly any opposition to the drug testing
during public meetings. Such is often the case in the many small towns
in the Ozarks and elsewhere that have adopted such policies.

Who wants to be labeled pro-drug?

Well, we're not pro-drug. But we stand for personal freedoms. We stand
for public policies that solve problems. And we stand for school
districts being in the business of educating, not policing social
norms. It's why we oppose the continued movement by too many school
districts to get into the drug testing business.

There's no doubt drugs are a scourge in our society. Meth. Pot. Booze.
All have their place in the pantheon of problems facing young people.
That doesn't mean we should depend on our schools to fix the problem.
We've already tried that with DARE programs, and guess what? The very
people who endorse DARE -- Branson has a long-running program -- are
now in effect admitting that it's not working by way of implementing
drug testing.

That's not going to work, either.

Besides sending a message to children that personal freedoms mean
little in today's society, the program also establishes a precedent
for setting up various classes of people.

Athletes are worthy of testing.

Nobody else is.

That's not only unfair, it's counterintuitive. Study after study has
shown that students who participate in extracurricular activities are
more likely to be good citizens, to have good grades and to ignore the
lure of drugs. That's not to say they're perfect, but if the school
really wants to stop drug use, why not test everybody? By focusing on
athletes and students who use a school parking lot, the school board
leaves out an entire class of students who are more than likely a
higher risk than those they decided to test.

What's next? Testing teachers? Testing volunteers? Testing for body
fat? Daily locker raids?

That the community in Branson, and the schools in general, want to
make a statement that drug-use won't be tolerated is a good thing. But
by choosing an intrusive and fundamentally discriminatory drug testing
program over some other comprehensive community-wide solution -- such
as, education, for instance -- the school board has chosen a path too
many other districts are following.

The message is a good one. The implementation, however, is all wrong.