DRUG TESTING NOT BEST USE OF FEDERAL MONEY

On Tuesday, John Walters, the White House director of National Drug
Policy, and Deputy Secretary of Education Ray Simon, announced with
great fanfare at a high school in Florida that $8.6 million in
federal money had been earmarked for student drug testing programs
across the country.

That money would be better spent to fund programs designed to
increase participation in after-school sports programs that could
reduce drug usage by our teens and stem the epidemic of childhood obesity.

There is an urgent need to reform the interscholastic sports
programs in the nation's public middle and high schools to provide
for full inclusion.

The current public high school model A one first-year team, one
varsity, one sub varsity A might have made sense at the time it was
adopted in 1924, when the number of roster spots was roughly equal
to the number of those who wanted to play. But it makes no
sense today, when the number of those who want to continue playing
sports in middle school and high school far exceeds the finite
number of spots available.

It is especially important for teenagers to know that they belong,
that they fit in. Cutting tells teenagers that they don't fit in,
that they don't belong. This is the wrong message to send during
adolescence. As the most prominent of all high school
extracurricular activities, athletics continues to confer on
its participants the highest levels of status and prestige in our
teenage culture. The feeling by athletes that they are special tends
to lead to disharmony, the creation of cliques, and to reinforcing
the jock culture, not to promoting feelings of community,
full inclusion, and cooperative learning that schools work so hard
to instill. Adopting a policy of full inclusion would be especially
beneficial for teenage boys, for whom sports would provide an outlet
for their aggression and help them connect socially with other boys.

According to a February 2006 Gallup Youth Study, one in five teens
is now overweight with only 21 percent of teens claiming to
participate in sports or recreation five to six days a week, and
only 19 percent of our teens participating in vigorous sports or
physical activity five to six days a week. Children who are
cut from sports teams will not exercise as frequently as they would
if they were playing sports; they are much more likely to spend
their afternoons watching television, becoming obese, and getting into trouble.

Another recent study found a positive association between playing
interscholastic sports and an increase in the number of an athlete's
friends who are academically oriented. The study also found that
participation in interscholastic sports "significantly increased
social ties between students and parents, students and the school,
parents and the school, and parents and parents... and a reduction
in illicit drug and alcohol use."

Signs that the time to eliminate exclusion from school sports teams
surfaces on a daily basis. This week marks the conclusion of the
2006 fall school, club and town sports seasons. If the nation's
newspapers are any guide, it was the most troubled and violent
youth sports season on record.

A policy of full inclusion for interscholastic sports at the middle
and high school level would also eliminate one of the principal
reasons for parental misconduct in youth sports.

Given the intense competition for the limited roster spots on high
school teams, no wonder so many parents are led by our
winner-take-all society to act in inappropriate ways A to become
violent when they see their child's chances at winning one of the
coveted spots threatened by a coach who decides to sit him or her
on the bench.

It simply makes no sense whatsoever from a public health standpoint
to continue the cutting policy that contributes to an overall
decline in physical fitness among adolescents and young adults and
does nothing to combat drug use by keeping teens busy in
after-school programs such as sports.