DRUG RULING TEACHES POOR LESSON

Schools are where children learn the core principles of the democratic
system and where they are versed in the rights and freedoms that define
them as American citizens.

Unfortunately, this past week the U.S. Supreme Court permitted schools to
teach students another lesson: Those hard-won liberties aren't nearly as
precious as the nation's obsessive war on drugs.

The court, in a 5-4 ruling, upheld the Tecumseh, Okla. school district's
policy of drug testing all students who participate in extracurricular
activities, even if there is no reason to suspect drug use.

This suspicion-less testing would seem to rub against protections Americans
enjoy against government intrusion into their privacy, unless they behave
in a manner that invites such an intrusion. But the court, in a ruling
penned by Justice Clarence Thomas, said students participating in a
voluntary school activity like a sports team or academic club have a lower
expectation of privacy.

Tecumseh school officials argued the testing was needed to combat an
epidemic of drug use, even though the initial tests turned up evidence of
drug use in three of 243 students -- hardly the makings of an epidemic.

The low number of drug-using students among the group tested reveals the
absurdity of the Oklahoma district's policy. Those who sign up for
after-school programs are generally the good kids, the ones least likely to
use drugs.

There's little to be gained by treating those children like criminals,
except to numb them to future invasions of their privacy and make them less
likely to protest further erosions of their civil liberties.

Children raised with a lowered expectation of privacy will become adults
who do not understand that protection from unwarranted government meddling
in their private lives is one of the fundamental freedoms guaranteed them
as American citizens.

Jonathan Turley, who teaches constitutional law at George Washington
University, wrote in the Los Angeles Times that a danger of the policy is
that kids who might choose to occasionally experiment with drugs will now
be less likely to also choose to get involved in after-school activities --
the best weapon against drug use. Turley also worries about the long-term
impact on the citizenry if children are conditioned to accept such a high
level of governmental monitoring.

"If our schools become a learning ground for personal submission and
collective monitoring," Turley wrote, "our children will replicate these
lessons as citizens. The increasing levels of surveillance and monitoring
in our lives have created a type of fish-bowl society that would have been
unthinkable a generation ago."

Although the court has opened the door for this mistreatment of good kids,
local school districts don't have to walk through it.

Parents should tell school boards that they send their kids to school to
learn to be liberty-loving Americans, not to yield their freedoms to a Big
Brother state.