SAYING 'NO' TO DRUG TESTS

WEST WINDSOR -- When two Gloucester County school districts began randomly
testing student athletes for drug use a few years ago, they contributed to
a trend.

Since then, Hunterdon Central Regional High School in Raritan Township has
joined 20 or more New Jersey districts in adopting such policies.

But officials in the West Windsor-Plainsboro district say they see no need
to jump on the bandwagon, despite the arrest of 11 of their students Monday
on charges they sold drugs on or near school property.

"We feel we deal with drug-prevention issues through the programs we have
in school and our curriculum. Being proactive in education is the way we're
helping our students," said spokeswoman Geraldine Hutner.

West Windsor-Plainsboro uses the "Amigos" peer counseling program and also
teaches about the dangers of drug use in health classes in every grade,
Hutner said.

She also pointed to the district's participation in the popular Drug Abuse
Resistance Education (DARE) program, in which police officers meet with
classes to explore the potential problems associated with drug use.

A national study released Monday by the University of North Carolina's
School of Public Health said DARE is not effective, but Nick DeMauro,
chairman and CEO of DARE New Jersey, said other studies have shown the
program works.

The arrests don't give credence to the argument against DARE, and neither
do they raise questions about the district's other programs, said Stan
Katz, a member of the West Windsor-Plainsboro school board.

"YOU CAN'T SAY that any criminal act is proof that a program has failed,"
he said. "What did the program do for the general population in the school?
Obviously everybody's disappointed that something like this happened, but
it doesn't reflect on any programs used to alert kids to the consequences
of their actions."

But even districts like West Windsor-Plainsboro, with its array of programs
aimed at preventing substance abuse, might find random drug testing useful,
proponents of such policies say.

Despite at least one threat to sue and many complaints that drug testing
violates a student's constitutional right to privacy, officials at
Hunterdon Central are so enthusiastic about their program that they have
expanded it to include students in all extracurricular activities and those
with campus parking permits.

Initially, Hunterdon Central had focused on athletes because two federal
cases specified they can be tested because they have a lesser expectation
of privacy than the general population, and that extracurricular activities
are a privilege, not a right.

In December, district Superintendent Raymond Farley said a comparison of
two student surveys -- one given prior to the start of the random
drug-testing program and the other after -- showed that drug use among
students had dropped.

The comparison showed that the percentage of students who used drugs rarely
or not at all had risen for every grade level, with the biggest change seen
among freshmen.

Moderate drug use had dropped in every grade except the junior class, where
it stayed the same, and serious drug use had dropped in all grades,
according to the comparison.

AT THE SAME TIME, the use of alcohol -- which is not among the drugs the
school tests for -- increased in some categories.

In Gloucester County, West Deptford and Washington Township school
officials admit they have no means of knowing whether their programs are
deterring drug use.

In fact, there are few statistics on the success of such programs anywhere
in the country since they are so new, said Mike Yaple, spokesman for the
New Jersey School Boards Association.

Still, delegates to the association voted in November 1997 to support not
only the testing of athletes but the expansion of random testing programs
to affect additional students.

"When it comes to drug testing, no single program will cure all the drug
woes of this nation," Yaple said yesterday. "But it may serve as a
deterrent, give kids an excuse to avoid peer pressure and help communities
get kids the treatment that they need."

But according to some parents and students, the American Civil Liberties
Union and two think tanks on drug policy reform, randomly testing students
for drugs doesn't make sense.

According to Deborah Jacobs, executive director of the ACLU, such policies
would be harmful even if they didn't violate the state and federal
constitutions.

"We're not sure why schools would want to do this, want to presume that
students are guilty rather than innocent, why they would not want to
demonstrate to students that having individualized suspicion is the only
appropriate basis on which to conduct an invasive search," she said in
December.

That kind of zero-tolerance policy can actually hurt children more than it
helps them, agrees Ethan Nadelmann, director of the Lindesmith Center, a
drug policy reform institute in New York City.

A BETTER IDEA is to give teenagers honest information about the effects of
specific substances without holding a threat over their heads, since it's
impossible to prevent every child from trying drugs, he said. Such a
program would allow children who do try drugs to make responsible
decisions, just as they might in deciding not to drink and drive, he said.

"The bottom line is not whether or not they use drugs, but making sure kids
grow up safe and healthy, even if they're experimenting with stuff,"
Nadelmann said.

That's especially true in light of the government's overall failure to
decrease drug use through programs that administer punishment, according to
the executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of
Marijuana Laws.

"One could point to any myriad of things the government does to advance the
war on drugs, and almost none of them works," said Allen St. Pierre. "It
really doesn't appear that nearly anything the government does has a
positive or negative impact on the amount of drugs adults or children use."