FORMER DALLAS STUDENTS CHALLENGE DRUG TESTING

Recent High School Graduates Beth Wade And Amy Cordy Say A Federally
Funded OHSU Study Violated Privacy.

Two recent graduates of Dallas High School have filed a lawsuit against 14
Oregon school districts and Oregon Health & Science University.

Beth Wade and Amy Cordy said they felt violated for having to take drug
tests as part of a federally funded OHSU study.

They are seeking $9 million in the class action suit that was filed June 28
in U.S. District Court in Portland.

In addition to being named as a defendant in the suit, OHSU is under a
federal investigation into its drug study procedures.

In the lawsuit, Wade told lawyers she was forced to participate in the
federally funded program as a condition of playing soccer.

She declined to comment Wednesday but told the Polk County
Itemizer-Observer in an interview that she opposed the drug testing program.

"It violates my rights as a student athlete," she said.

Attorney Alan Milstein, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs,
said the lawsuit does not negate the June 27 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that
mandatory drug testing in schools is OK if a policy is in place.

"This case involves whether or not you can compel a student to take part in
a human experiment," Milstein said Wednesday from his Pennsauken, N.J., office.

"The students were compelled to be human guinea pigs without their
voluntary consent."

Martin Munguia, an OHSU spokesman, said the districts chosen for the drug
testing portion of its study were schools that already had drug-testing
policies in place.

He said the study was to determine whether students in athletics would be
less likely to use drugs if they knew there was a possibility of being tested.

Two of the districts cited in the lawsuit, Silver Falls and Dallas, play
different roles in the study.

Silver Falls Superintendent Craig Roessler said Silverton High School is
part of the control group.

Control group members were not asked to take drug tests. Instead, they
filled out anonymous questionnaires about drug testing, Munguia said.

Roessler said Silverton High School does not have a drug-testing policy.

"I would suspect eventually we will be dropped from the lawsuit because our
students weren't drug tested," he said.

Dallas Superintendent Dave Novotney was not available for comment
Wednesday, but a copy of the school's drug testing policy indicated it was
adopted Sept. 16, 2000.

OHSU's research project, Student Athletic Testing Using Random
Notification, started that year. The project is under federal investigation.

The Office for Human Research Protections, a federal agency under the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services, is investigating the drug-testing
study. Spokeswoman Pat El-Hinnawy declined to say when the investigation
began and did not know when it would be concluded.

Although she could not say specifically why OHSU's study was being
investigated, she commented on its general procedure.

"In general, it's usually when there is someone who brings it to the
attention of our office that there might be issues of irregularity,"
El-Hinnawy said.

If wrongdoing is found, El-Hinnawy said, there is a range of actions that
can be taken.

In most cases, the institution conducting the study accepts the findings
and works to correct the problems. In the most extreme cases, when an
institution declines to accept the findings and correct the problems, all
federally funded research projects at the institution are stopped until the
problems are corrected.