DOING IT FOR THE CHILDREN

The Drug War Against Local Control and Parental Responsibility

Not long ago, about the time Republicans became a majority in
Congress, many conservatives considered the biggest threat to family
values to be a powerful and activist central government. There may
soon come a day when conservatives wonder how federal laws passed to
perpetuate the ever-failing drug war became a proxy war on parental
authority and local government decision making.

As an example, on Sept. 19 the House of Representatives passed H.R.
5295, the "Student and Teacher Safety Act of 2006." The act requires
"each state, local educational agency, and school district" to
implement a federal mandate deeming reasonable and permissible "a
search by a full time teacher or school official, acting on any
colorable suspicion based on professional experience and judgment, of
any minor student, on the grounds of any public school, if the search
is conducted to ensure that classrooms, school buildings, and school
property remain free of all weapons, dangerous materials, or illegal
narcotics."

Adding insult to injury, the bill would deny certain federal funds
(issued under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965) to
localities that fail to implement the federal search policy.

States and local school districts -- with parental involvement -- are
fully capable of setting school safety policies without having a
one-size-fits-all mandate handed down from Washington, D.C.

Moreover, H.R. 5295 -- which was brought to the floor of the House
without committee hearings and passed by a voice vote, thus making it
difficult for citizens to know how their representatives voted -- is
designed to limit either discretion and common sense on the part of
local authorities.

"The way this bill is worded, it strongly implies that the school
district's policy has to be one where they can conduct random mass
searches," said Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the
Washington, D.C.-based Drug Policy Alliance. "If the principal hears
a rumor that someone is selling marijuana, he could search every
student in the building. Our big concern is that school
administrators will get the wrong idea about the limits of their
constitutional powers."

Federally coerced mass searches of adolescents do not teach kids how
to be free citizens of a constitutional republic, but rather how to
be good and obedient subjects of the state

Perhaps there are at least some Colorado parents and elected
officials willing to "just say no" to the federal government's latest
tax dollar-backed intrusion into local governmental and family
affairs, even if it means giving up some federal bribe money.

---