HIGH COURT NEEDS TO SET STRICT LIMITS ON DRUG TESTS

The U.S. Supreme Court recently agreed to hear a case that should be
followed closely by Brevard County school officials, local parents and
students.

The court said it would decide whether public schools may drug-test nearly
any student involved in after-school activities in situations in which
there is no evidence that the student or the school has a drug problem.

The outcome of the case could affect Brevard County schools if the School
Board ever decides to implement such drug testing.

An anti-drug activist has suggested that students should be tested
routinely as a prerequisite for participating in extracurricular activities
such as band or cheerleading, and similar proposals are heard periodically.

In the case before the high court, the American Civil Liberties Union filed
suit on behalf of students in Tecumseh, Okla., who objected to the drug
tests. They argued that being denied access to such activities would put
them at a disadvantage in their college applications.

"I felt they were accusing us and convicting us before they had given us a
chance," said Lindsey Earls, who sang in her high school choir and
participated in a high school quiz team when the testing began at her school.

Only students involved in competitive extracurricular activities were
tested, on the theory that by voluntarily representing the school, they had
opened themselves to greater scrutiny than other students.

"It was not where the problem was, but where (school officials) thought
they could, in essence, legally get away with drug testing," said Graham
Boyd, the ACLU lawyer representing the students.

In a 1995 Oregon case, the Supreme Court said a school with a pervasive
drug problem legally could submit student athletes to drug tests, but did
not address schoolwide testing or extracurricular activities.

"This case gives the court the opportunity to draw the line at random
testing of students," Boyd said.

A decision is expected next summer.

In the Oklahoma case, an appeals court struck down that state's drug-
testing policy, and state courts in Indiana, New Jersey, Oregon and
Pennsylvania have expressed similar reservations about such policies in the
past few years.

Legalities aside, random drug testing of students is a tactic that should
be used only as a last resort, and then only in a school with a serious and
pervasive drug problem.

Like adults, students have rights - to privacy, to respect as human beings,
to a presumption of innocence.

Those rights should not be trampled upon in any well-meaning but misguided
effort to trap substance abusers.