DISTRICTS JOIN STUDY ON DRUG TESTING

Three Lane County school districts have agreed to join in a three-year
federal study to see if randomly testing student athletes actually reduces
illegal drug use in high school.

Creswell, McKenzie and Oakridge will participate in the $3.6 million
program, to be launched next fall by Oregon Health Sciences University in
Portland. Up to two dozen high schools will be involved.

The National High School Federation estimates that as many as 1,000 school
districts nationwide now do random drug testing of athletes. But the head of
the OHSU project, Dr. Linn Goldberg, said no one has ever determined
scientifically whether it achieves its goal.

"Billions of dollars have been spent on mandatory drug-testing programs - in
government, business, sports and education - but nobody has ever evaluated
whether they really result in decreased drug use," he said.

"We're not drug-testing advocates," said Goldberg, professor of medicine and
head of OHSU's Division of Health Promotion and Sports Medicine. "As
scientists, we have to remain skeptical, although our hypothesis going in is
that these programs could significantly deter drug use among high school
athletes."

Drug testing of student athletes has been a hot issue in past years. Five
years ago, the matter reached the U.S. Supreme Court in a case involving the
Vernonia School District in northwestern Oregon.

The high court ruled that "deterring drug use by our nation's
schoolchildren" justified the Vernonia district's drug-testing program,
which began in 1989.

So far, OHSU researchers have found relatively little controversy during
their visits with districts considering joining the program, Goldberg said,
although some discussions with local school boards, parents and students
have been contentious.

After four previous question-and-answer sessions with researchers, the
Creswell School Board voted unanimously last Wednesday, without discussion,
to join the project, called the SATURN program, for Student-Athlete Testing
Using Random Notification.

The Oakridge and McKenzie districts accepted the OHSU offer to participate
several weeks ago.

The Oakridge board also gave unanimous consent. McKenzie Superintendent
Marcia LaDuke said her board voted 4-2 because so few people turned out to
express opinions on the proposal.

"The two (dissenting) board members weren't necessarily against the idea -
they just thought maybe we should have one more meeting to give people
another chance to discuss it," she said.

Nonetheless, the American Civil Liberties Union, which presented legal
arguments against the Vernonia program, intends to file a similar challenge
to the OHSU project - this time in state court, said Dave Fidanque,
executive director of the Oregon chapter.

After the Supreme Court decided to allow Vernonia's drug testing, the 9th
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to send the case back to the state
Supreme Court, leaving Oregon's constitutional issues in the case untested,
Fidanque said.

The ACLU contends that the Oregon Constitution grants citizens greater
privacy protection than the federal Constitution and believes mandatory drug
testing violates that protection, he said.

Does it work, or doesn't it?

Concern about drug use among all adolescents spurred OHSU to go after the
National Institutes of Health grant, Goldberg said, even though only student
athletes will be involved in the study.

A national survey in 1998 by the National Institute on Drug Abuse found that
one in four high school seniors had used at least one illicit drug during
the preceding 30 days, up from one in seven reported in 1992.

A third of all high school students said they had been drunk during the past
month. Among athletes, 39 percent of males and 29 percent of females
admitted to binge drinking at least once within the past month, and even
more - just more than half the boys and just less than half the girls - said
they had used alcohol during that period.

"That's why we wanted this grant, to study this and get the best results
humanly possible," Goldberg said. "If drug testing is legal and people are
doing it - and spending all this money on it - we at least need to know if
it really works. If not, why do it?"

The OHSU project will impose mandatory random drug testing on student
athletes in half of participating high schools.

Students in the other schools will serve as a control group, providing
information to the researchers by way of periodic questionnaires that will
be filled out by both groups.

Urine samples will be tested for the presence of alcohol, anabolic steroids
and a range of street drugs such as marijuana, methamphetamine, cocaine and
heroin. The techniques used will be so sophisticated "that there won't be
any false positives," Goldberg said, although he said positive results will
be subjected to a second test.

The schools won't incur any costs associated with the testing program.

Superintendent Larry Horton said Oakridge officials "don't feel that we have
a significant problem with drug use among students in our district."

However, "we thought if we can help contribute to the knowledge base on this
issue, participating was worth our consideration," Horton said. "If it's
determined that this kind of program is effective - if it can save kids'
health or even their lives - we owe it to them to do it."

Even so, Horton said board members appreciated the concern expressed by a
few parents who believe the testing would be an invasion of students'
privacy.

Parent Shannon Weber, who has two children in the Oakridge district, said
that's why she objects to the project.

"I think if they want to do a study on children and drug usage, they need to
test all kids, not just athletes," Weber said. "I'm not naive - I know there
are drug problems in all schools, including ours. But I think this kind of
program takes the responsibility of parenting away from parents, and I'm
against that."

The requirement that her children participate in a drug-testing program to
be eligible for student athletics puts her in a difficult position, Weber
said.

"I don't agree with this program, but I love to see my children in sports,
which are very important to them," she said. "So now, I'm damned if I do and
damned if I don't - if I allow them to participate, they see me doing
something I believe is wrong. If I don't, I have two very miserable kids."

The ACLU vs. Vernonia

The Vernonia case turned on the same issues that concern Weber. But the
court decided that because students generally must meet state standards for
a variety of health issues, including physical examinations and
immunizations, "students within the school environment have a lesser
expectation of privacy than members of the population generally."

The court also held that "school athletes have a reduced expectation of
privacy" simply by virtue of "choosing to go out for the team. ... They
voluntarily subject themselves to a degree of regulation even higher than
that imposed on students generally."

But the ACLU's Fidanque said the fatal constitutional flaw in mandatory drug
testing is that it "assumes that people are guilty and makes them prove
their innocence."

"We consider it the same principle as a case that (successfully) challenged
the constitutionality of having sobriety checkpoints" on Oregon roads, he
said.

While the federal Constitution has been interpreted by the high court to
allow "general searches" that affect all citizens equally, Fidanque believes
the Oregon Constitution interprets search-and-seizure more stringently.

The Vernonia case settled the question at the federal level, he said, "but
the issue has never come back for resolution at the state level."

After the OHSU researchers determine which schools in their study will do ra
ndom drug testing and which will be control groups, the ACLU will try to
find a student willing to bring a lawsuit against the program in state
court, he said.

"I know Dr. Goldberg sees us as a pain in the neck," Fidanque said. "He
wants to set up a good study, and we're getting in the way with the
constitution. But we think all the school districts who agree to participate
need to know that there's a chance they will get sued over this."

The ACLU sent letters to at least one school district - in Lincoln County -
warning its school board of that possibility, but the district chose to
participate in the study anyway, Fidanque said.

Vernonia Superintendent Lawrence McClellan said that after more than 10
years of mandatory drug testing, his district's high school athletes view
the practice as "part of the institution - they just take it for granted."

However, despite its pioneering role in drug testing, the district has no
hard data to prove the value of its program, McClellan said.

"The way the program is set up, we don't keep any records - they're all
destroyed at the end of the (school) year," he said.

"This is my third year here, and I've seen a total of four positive tests in
that time, two of them in this school year. Three of those students went
through the required treatment program and one had already quit the sport
before the positive test came back."

How the study will work

Although he has no statistical basis on which to recommend his district's
program, "I believe anything we can do to help kids is good," the
superintendent said.

Creswell resident LaVetta Dinnel, whose son Gavin plays high school
basketball, said she has no reservations about his participating in a
mandatory drug testing program.

"We really haven't talked much about it, but I'm kind of from the standpoint
that if you have nothing to hide, it shouldn't be a problem," Dinnel said.

She said she and her husband have each had to go through drug testing at
work, "so it's not a new idea to us."

Contacted at school the day after the school board made its decision to join
the SATURN project, Gavin said he supports the drug-testing plan.

"I encourage it, because you don't want anybody to have drugs on your team,
or on any team you face," he said. "The only reason to (fear) drug testing
is if you do drugs, and then you shouldn't be doing the sport. You need to
make that choice."

Despite the relatively small number of schools that will participate in the
OHSU study, the results should be applicable to drug-testing efforts
everywhere because of the rigorous methods that will be used by the
scientists, Goldberg said.

The schools will represent the gamut of possibilities - urban and rural,
large and small - and each test school will be matched with a similar
control school to make the data as reliable as possible, he said.

"People might say, `Gee, you're only looking at 10 or so test schools and 10
or so control schools - how valid can that be?' " Goldberg said. "But it's
like making a pot of soup.

"When you go to add the salt, do you have to taste the whole volume of soup?
Of course not. You stir it all up to make it uniform and just take a taste
here and there."

Student athletes in the test schools will be selected at random and will be
subject to being called during any school hour or activity to provide urine
samples, under the guidance of researchers who will travel to the schools.

All students who want to participate in athletics will have to agree in
advance to submit to testing.

About 10 percent to 20 percent of students will be tested during each school
year. An out-of-state panel of researchers will use code numbers assigned to
students for each random sample.

The doctors who collect the samples will be the same sex as the students
they test. And all have been certified as physician crew chiefs with the
U.S. Olympic Committee and have experience in testing world-class athletes
for drugs.

Penalties for students who test positive will be oriented "more toward
getting the kid help than punishing them," Goldberg said.

If a drug screen reveals the presence of illegal substances, school
officials will be notified. They in turn will notify the parent or guardian
of the test result, and counseling will be arranged.

Subsequent positive test results would subject the student to increasing
penalties, including suspension from school and removal from the sport.

The impact on nonathletes

The researchers also will study whether random testing of athletes might
help reduce drug use among nonathletes.

"Everyone in a school tends to look up to the athletes - when did you last
hear about having homecoming for the Chess Club, or a pep assembly for the
Drama Club?" Goldberg said. "So if the athletes are held to a higher
standard, other students may decide that's the standard they also want to
meet."

On the other hand, drug testing of athletes could increase the incidence of
drug use within some schools, according to a statistical analysis of the
issue done by Robert Taylor, an assistant professor of economics at San
Diego State University.

His data "suggest a disturbing, previously unnoticed problem with random
drug testing of student athletes," Taylor wrote in a 1997 article published
by the Cato Institute, a public policy think tank in Washington, D.C.

"Drug testing, by invading the privacy of student athletes and by making
continued drug use difficult or impossible, increases the `cost' of athletic
participation and will most probably lead marginal student athletes to quit
the team" and "revert to the drug-use patterns of their nonathletic peers,"
said Taylor, who reached his conclusions using a complex statistical
"compensating behavior model."

If in the end that's what the data show, so be it, said Goldberg, whose five
sons, who range in age from 11 to 26, all have been involved in school
sports.

"Since no one has ever documented whether testing works, that's what we may
find," he said. "If scientific results say it doesn't work, it should be
scrapped. If science says it's viable, then it should continue."

Previous surveys about high school students' attitudes toward drug testing
indicate many would consider it a deterrent, he said.

In a survey of 1,299 Oregon and Washington student athletes taken two years
ago, "80 percent said they would not drink if they knew they might be
subject to a drug test, and 70 percent said they would not use drugs,"
Goldberg said.

"Those numbers are very high. If mandatory testing could achieve a reduction
in drug use of even 50 percent, I would consider it incredible."

'SATURN' STUDENT ATHLETE DRUG TESTING PROGRAM

Purpose of study: Determine if mandatory drug testing of student athletes
selected at random lowers the incidence of drug use among high school
students.

Who's doing it: Physician researchers from the Division of Health Promotion
and Sports Medicine at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland.

What will happen: Student athletes will be chosen for random drug testing in
half the participating schools. No testing will be done in the other
schools. All students will complete periodic questionnaires, however.

Participating districts: Creswell, Eddyville, Gervais, Lincoln City,
McKenzie, Monroe, Newport, Oakridge, Philomath, Sherman, Waldport,
Warrenton, The Dalles and Toledo have signed up so far. Up to 10 more
districts are being sought.

Duration of study: Testing begins in September and continues for three
academic years, ending in June 2003. Data analysis and a final report will
be done after the testing.

- - Oregon Health Sciences University

CRESWELL STUDENTS ON DRUG TESTING

Here's what some Creswell High School students had to say about mandatory
drug testing for student athletes the day after their school board voted to
join in the SATURN study:

Richard Franssen, junior: "I don't care, because I don't do drugs. Some kids
are worried about it - I'm sort of worried about it, because I think some
kids won't come out for the sport."

Jessica Low, freshman: "I'm against it, because I think the school should be
able to trust the athletes. I'm pretty sure the athletes here do not take
drugs."

Garrett Wilson, sophomore: "I don't think it's right unless there's some
suspicion of drug use - then it's OK."

Eli Goodwin, sophomore: "I'm not against it. If you're doing sports, you
shouldn't be doing drugs."

Mackenzie England, freshman: "It's a good idea, because it helps keep the
athletes as good as they can be. If they really like their sport, if they
really want to play, they shouldn't do drugs."