PRIVATE SCHOOLS FIND GOOD SELLING POINT IN TOUGH POLICIES ON DRUG TESTS

While drug testing in public schools is still rare enough to make
headlines, a growing number of private schools are finding that a tough
policy, even if it intrudes on student privacy, is often a selling point
for nervous parents.

The administrators of most private schools "don't fool around when it comes
to discipline," says David Johns, president of the National Private Schools
Association Group. "As far as discipline and managing social problems goes,
they take the lead. They're little dictatorships, and they're successful.

"That's not compromising human rights and safety issues, that's guidance
for young minds that need it," Johns said. How aggressively a private
school chooses to enforce its drug policy often depends on the type of
child they intend to serve as well as the desires of the parents.

At St. Thomas More High School, a private Catholic school with about 900
students in Lafayette, La., seven children a day are randomly selected for
drug testing. The school guarantees that each child will be tested at least
once during the school year, and a child who tests positive twice in a row
will be expelled.

The policy is new this year, and principal Ray Simon says that about 95
percent of the parents embraced the concept when it was first presented,
and not one parent has removed a child from the school as a result of the
policy.

"Naturally, the students were a little more reserved in their enthusiasm,"
Simon added.

Simon believes that the method of testing they decided to use -- hair
analysis -- is much less intrusive and embarrassing for teen-agers than the
traditional urinalysis.

William Thistle, general counsel for the company administering the hair
analysis tests at St. Thomas More, said Psychemedics Corporation currently
has about 30 schools as clients.

"Picture hair growth as a tape recorder," Thistle said. "As the hair grows
out of your head, drug use is trapped in that hair folicle. As it grows out
from your scalp, you have that record of drug use.

"An inch and a half of hair represents about a three-month period," he said.

Hair testing is more expensive than urinalysis -- about $50 per test vs.
the average $25 to $30 for urinalysis. But advocates of hair analysis say
the test is virtually impossible to beat.

"You can look on the Internet and find 100 products to adulterate your
urine," Thistle said. "It's not lost on the drug user that if I'm using
cocaine today I can be negative tomorrow by drinking water. I can be
negative in 72 hours by doing nothing."

Under one Internet heading labeled, "Fooling the Bladder Cops," the drug
user is advised on a long list of household items which do and don't work
to skew the results of urinalysis, including dilution with water. At the
extreme end of the spectrum, the site also advises that the subject can
empty his bladder before the test and inject "clean" urine by syringe or
catheter.

"It is harder to cheat" a hair test, advises principal Simon. "The hair
sample is taken, immediately put into a type of ziplock bag. And it's
immediately initialed by the person taking the sample and by the student."

In urinalysis, there's usually a brief moment of privacy, Simon said, and
that brief moment is an opportunity to cheat. Some drug paraphernalia shops
are selling a shampoo that claims to clean the hair of drug evidence, but
Simon says Psychemedics advised him that it doesn't work.

Scott Greenough, director of operations for Choicepoint Health and Safety
Solutions, a company that administers urinalysis tests, said attempts to
alter samples don't occur as often as conventional wisdom would lead people
to believe. Even if the subject is allowed to collect his sample in
private, an attendant at the collection site will usually check it for
color and even temperature to guard against tampering.

"I thinks it's safe to say there are ways for someone to beat any drug
test, whether urinalysis, a hair test or saliva or any method," Greenough
said. "But in the case of urinalysis, unless someone moonlighted as a
chemist, it's not easy."

And while there are situations that can create a false positive result in
urinalysis -- the ingestion of large amounts of poppy seeds is one of the
better known factors -- most reliable labs will provide a more
sophisticated, follow-up test after a subject tests positive, Greenough
said.

Hair testing is reportedly not subject to as high an incidence of false
positives as urinalysis. But the two approaches differ in other ways,
Greenough explained.

"Urinalysis provides a real time analysis of recent drug use," he said.
"The testing time frame will usually involve the use of illegal substances
within one to seven days. Hair testing covers a much longer time frame but
is less accurate for recent drug use because of the way the drug
metabolites are deposited in the hair follicle."

Copyright 1998 Houston Chronicle