SCHOOLS' DRUG TESTS DON'T CURB DRUG USE, STUDY SAYS

Researchers Showed Surprise At Results

Drug testing in schools does not deter student drug use any more than doing
no screening at all, the first large-scale study on the subject has found.

The U.S. Supreme Court has twice empowered schools to test for drugs -
first among student athletes in 1995, then last year for those in other
extracurricular activities. Both times, it cited the role that screening
supposedly plays in combating substance abuse as a rationale for limiting
whatever privacy rights students might have.

But the new federally financed study of 76,000 students nationwide, by far
the largest to date, found that drug use is just as common in schools with
testing as in those without it.

"It suggests that there really isn't an impact from drug testing as
practiced," said Lloyd D. Johnston, a study researcher from the University
of Michigan. "It's the kind of intervention that doesn't win the hearts and
minds of children. I don't think it brings about any constructive changes
in their attitudes about drugs."

The prevalence of drug use in schools that tested for drugs and those that
did not was so similar that it surprised researchers, who have been paid by
the government to track student behavior for nearly 30 years and whose data
about adolescent drug use is considered highly reliable.

The study found that 37 percent of 12th graders in schools that tested for
drugs said they had smoked marijuana in the last year, for example,
compared with 36 percent in schools that did not. In a universe of tens of
thousands of students, such a slight deviation is statistically
insignificant and means the results are essentially identical, the
researchers said.

Similarly, 21 percent of 12th graders in schools with testing said they had
used other illicit drugs such as cocaine or heroin in the last year, while
19 percent of their counterparts in schools without screening said they had
done so.

The same pattern held true for every other drug and grade level the study
explored. Whether looking at marijuana or harder drugs such as cocaine and
heroin, or middle school students compared with high school students, the
fact that their schools tested for drugs showed no signs of curbing
students' drug use.

Although it is possible that schools that imposed screening had had higher
rates of drug use beforehand, the researchers said that was extremely
unlikely because they controlled for behavioral factors normally associated
with substance abuse, such as truancy and parental absence.

"Obviously, the justices did not have the benefit of this study," said
Graham Boyd, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union who argued the
case against drug testing before the Supreme Court last year. "Now there
should be no reason for a school to impose an intrusive or even insulting
drug test when it's not going to do anything about student drug use."

But other researchers contend that urinalysis conducted by schools is so
faulty, supervision so lax and opportunities for cheating so plentiful,
that the study may only prove schools do a poor job of testing.

"That's like blaming antibiotics if you didn't take them properly, or
blaming the doctor who prescribed them," said Linn Goldberg, a professor of
medicine at Oregon Health and Science University, who conducted a much more
limited study on two Oregon high schools last year. It found that
intensive, Olympic-grade testing could reduce drug use.

Still, Goldberg argued, even his study did not prove that testing limits
consumption.

Most schools have shied away from drug testing. The Michigan study,
published last month in The Journal of School Health, a peer-reviewed
publication of the American School Health Association, found that only 18
percent of the nation's schools did screening from 1998 to 2001, most of
them high schools.

Such tests do not violate the Fourth Amendment safeguards, the Supreme
Court has ruled, because children have limited expectations of privacy, the
tests are not overly intrusive and because they are likely to deter
substance abuse.

The Michigan study was financed through grants from the National Institute
on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health, as well as the
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which supports drug testing in schools.