THE UNUSUAL SUSPECTS

A Policy Requiring Teachers to Report What Medicines They Take Is Invasive
and Impractical

Worries about drug use abound. Maybe that's because we realize what a
pathetic failure the "war on drugs" has been, how powerless we are to do
more than momentarily stanch the hemorrhage of drug availability.

The only things worse than our failure to solve the drug problem are the
intrusive, demoralizing, ineffective ideas we keep generating as responses.

The latest - no doubt well-meaning but essentially wrong-headed - comes
from the Jefferson County school system. It has adopted a policy that
requires teachers who are taking medication that could impair them
physically or mentally to tell their supervisors about it.

What a grand-sounding proposal, but, oh, those satanic details! Teachers
apparently will now have to tell supervisors about every illness they
suffer and every medical relief they adopt.

After all, every medicine has a side effect. Even common aspirin can cause
physical problems for some. And, unfortunately, side effects vary from
person to person. Supervisors will have to take crash courses in
pharmacology - which, unfortunately, usually requires years of study - to
have any clue about specific medication, much less drug interaction. A
doctor's drug manual won't cut it.

What circumstances would force a teacher to report the use of a medication?
Who knows? Will teachers with illnesses they might not want to discuss -
and shouldn't have to discuss, like treatable depression - have to tell
supervisors? Apparently.

"We expect (teachers) to perform," said Superintendent Bob Neighbors, "and
if you can't, then we want to know about it." Fine. But where does
providing your medical history to supervisors who can turn it against you
come in? Aren't supervisors supposed to be able to discern who is teaching
properly and who isn't without rummaging through purses and briefcases for
prescription bottles?

This is another of those arbitrary, high-handed and invasive searches
without cause - this time with teachers expected to report their own
undefined guilt. The fourth and fifth amendments to the U.S. Constitution
have things to say about this.

Jefferson County can surely spend its school money more productively. It
can surely treat its teachers like honest citizens, not drug suspects. And
it can surely figure out how to discover drug-abusing teachers without
putting the innocent on trial.

The freedom to be safe and secure in your person is getting hammered enough
by national law enforcement leaders who aren't quite sure how to protect
Americans from terrorists. Sometimes, as in Jefferson County, the threats
to freedom come from ourselves.