TESTING TIMES AS SCHOOLS TACKLE DRUGS

Drug testing is not reserved for Olympic athletes. As Nicholos Maling
reports, school students have now come under scrutiny.

As adult New Zealand flounders over whether to decriminalise cannabis,
subjecting school children to drug tests is becoming a reality.

Since June last year about 40 children in Whangarei - most aged 13 and
14 - have been part of a programme of routine cannabis tests. Several
times a term, in some cases, every fortnight, they have been taken
from school to the local doctor where they have peed in a beaker. Some
have even been tested during their holidays.

Similar programmes are now being considered by other schools around
the country - a number are already underway - and there is growing
promotion of even more radical approaches.

Drug educator Jeff McIntyre advocates a US-style model for tackling
drugs in schools called "coercive care".

One part of the proposal sees schools requiring children who want to
play in high profile sports teams, the orchestra, choir or school
play, to sign contracts in which they promise to remain drug free.

They also submit to random tests where there is suspected drug
use.

If they break the contract they don't play. If they don't sign, they
don't play.

Mclntyre's ideas were recently presented to school boards in material
from the New Zealand School Trustee Association (NZSTA) - which
alongside the National Party has launched a petition against
decriminalising cannabis. The response to McIntyre has been so great
that the NZSTA has asked him to develop a brochure on drug free
schools, part of which will include information on drug free contracts
and drug tests. It will be sent to each school and posted on the
association's web site.

Why there is a growing interest in drug testing in schools is not hard
to fathom. Early findings from a new survey of 4621 school children in
the Wairarapa and Kapiti Coast suggest that at least 30% of children
aged I to 17 have tried cannabis. Of those, about 55% are likely have
used it in the previous month.

The survey is the biggest of its type in the country and reflects the
outcomes of other studies conducted in recent years.

Cannabis use, it appears is becoming endemic among young people - a
situation teachers say has worsened since decriminalisation entered
mainstream politics.

Link this to a move away from simply suspending or expelling large
numbers of drug-taking kids, and schools are left casting round for
alternative ways of dealing with the problem.

"There is an emphasis to try and keep young people the education
system," NZSTA president Owen Edgerton says.

"The idea of drug testing [means] a student can return to school
[after being caught with drugs]. I think that has got to be seen as
quite positive, keeping the student at school and ensuring that the
student is drug free."

That view is not shared by everyone. Drug testing is controversial not
only with civil libertarians who argue that it reaches outside a
school's realm of responsibility and into a child's private life, but
among youth workers and drug educators.

NZ Drug Foundation spokeswoman Sally Jackman is cautious about it. She
warns that drug testing creates problems of its own. Not least of
which are the reliability of the tests.

Even Ministry of Youth Affairs acting chief executive Anne Carter
observes that although schools may have the best of intentions in
using drug tests, they need to consider "whether the potential breach
of young people's rights is justified by the information obtained
through testing".

"Testing is not, in itself, a solution," she says.

A recent legal opinion compiled by the Youth Law Project and still to
be tested in court reads: "Drug testing policies clearly infringe
students' rights under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990, the
Privacy Act 1993, as well as the United Nations Convention on the
Rights of the Child, and are illegal in all but the most extreme
circumstances."

Tough words and yet there are forms of drug testing which have
garnered support in the most unlikely of quarters. Children's
Commissioner Roger McClay is a good example. While also a crusader for
children's rights, he says if a young person is caught with drugs,
accepts testing and parent 'agree, then "I think there is nothing
wrong with that."

The testing underway in Whangarei, called Rubicon, is an example of
what he is talking about.

Students caught taking or carrying drugs at school are brought to the
attention of the police -usually Hank van Engelen, the campus cop. As
part of what is effectively police diversion, the pupils are given a
choice - sign a contract under which they agree to attend drug
counselling and undergo a series of random drug tests or take their
chances with the school board.

If the pupil signs the contract and parents consent, he or she will be
randomly tested at a frequency determined by the severity of the
offence. The test is a urine test conducted by the local pathology
laboratory. It is paid for by the parents if they can afford it, and
the involvement of the pupil in the programme is kept confidential to
all but the most senior school administrators.

Van Engelen says it has proved enormously successful. Since June,
about 40 pupils have agreed to take part and only three have come back
with positive tests. They have been dealt with individually. Several
parents have sought to have their children tested in the holidays, and
some students have asked to remain in the programme beyond the usual
12 weeks.

"I don't know if there is a real privacy or civil rights problem in
it. It is a police diversion. It is not like we can walk into a school
and ask any kid to pee in a bottle," says Van Engelen.

McIntyre, however, believes that drug testing has the potential to be
taken much further. By introducing drug free contracts enforced by
drug tests for sports team; and other events, the drug free message
can be driven into a wider cross-section of students. It is an
approach that has proved successful in the United States where
cannabis use among 12th graders plummeted from 37.9% to 11.9% between
1978 and 1992.

The problem with existing drug programmes, he says, is that most kids
aren't stupid enough to bring drugs to school and they are also
extremely adept at avoiding parental monitoring.

"The first step [taken by Whangarei] is a step in the right direction
but it will only catch those who get caught.

"Drug problems need to get to a certain level of seriousness before
there's community consensus on appropriate levels of intervention. US
schools have been comfortable with this approach given their problems.
In New Zealand, the jury is still out."

McClay, for one, has major reservations about Mclntyre's proposals.
They could have terrible ramifications, he says.

"You could have children signing up to all sorts of promises so that
they could be included in a rugby team. That is an area where I would
be starting to say hang on a minute, these are people who have certain
rights like the rest of us."

Opposition education spokesman Nick Smith, a supporter of limited drug
testing, also draws the line at such a blanket proposal.

"I'm nervous of drug testing except where there is a reasonable cause.
I think young people deserve as much as anyone else the presumption of
innocence except where there is guilt established."

A key question about drug testing is how far is it growing in
popularity simply because it is there? For most schools alcohol and
cigarettes remain the No 1 problem, yet there is no talk of testing
for those.

It is an issue hinted at by Privacy Commissioner Bruce Slane: "I do caution
any organisation that there is a danger of jumping to a technological fix of
a social problem, particularly when it is being promoted by organisations
making a profit out of providing that service."

Barry Maister, rector of St Andrew's College in Christchurch, is still
wrestling with the idea of drug testing. "Schools are having to run a
fine line between maintaining standards and also being realistic about
the fact that children will experiment," he says.