DRUG TESTS IN SCHOOLS IS NOT AMERICAN WAY

School drug testing sounds like witch hunt, Sept. 24 Times
editorial, and Drug tests benefit kids, parents, Sept. 29 letter to
the editor from Calvina Fay.

Are the citizens of Hernando County aware of Fay's economic interest
in selling drug detection kits to the county?

Calvina Fay is the executive director of Drug Free America Foundation
and operated a company that sold test kits to businesses and
agencies. Anything she says has to be weighed against the potential
economic conflict of interest she represents.

Further confusion stems from the vision of our state and nation that
she and superintendent Wendy Tellone seem to endorse, where innocent
teens would be subject to invasive testing that tells them the "Land
of the free and home of the brave" is only so much jingoistic
propaganda shoveled at them in civics classes. Tellone seems to
desire "The land of the guilty until proven innocent" motif for our
students and our state.

I think students would benefit far more from increased education and
counseling to help them to understand the dangers of certain drugs
and the ways to cope with the peer pressure that they are subject to.
As to the availability of federal funds just needing a program to be
spent on, remember that with federal largesse comes strings, long,
entangling strings attached to chains that an independent school
board ought to be very leery of.

Finally, it is true that more than half of all graduating seniors
have experimented to some degree with some form of illegal
substances, usually marijuana, and we cannot as a society afford to
make them all into criminals with records and forced vacations in
gray-bar hotels, where they become marked for life and unable to
become fully functioning members of society.

What Fay and Tellone propose is foolish, counterproductive and, most
important, contrary to what I like to think of as "The American Way".

Charlie Jensen

Lecanto