EXPERIMENT WITH RANDOM TESTING TO CLEAR DRUGS FROM OUR SCHOOLS

Suggest random drug testing in schools, and fierce opposition springs up
immediately. Parents and teachers who wouldn't dream of allowing a child
with a contagious disease to attend school seem willing to tolerate
students showing up for class with cocaine, heroin or marijuana coursing
through their bodies and affecting their brains.

Drug use is as contagious as rubella or tuberculosis, although in a
different way. When drugs push their way into a school or a business or
community they spread rapidly and destructively unless tough measures
are imposed to stop them.

Education about narcotics for all students helps to stave off drug abuse in
schools, and so does a targeted approach for those children at high risk of
becoming abusers. In the Seattle region, an intervention program called
Reconnecting Youth is successful in plucking students from the brink of
disaster, putting them through a personal growth class and tracking them as
their grades and lives improve noticeably.

A teacher in Reconnecting Youth makes a critical point that should be
evident everywhere but doesn't seem to be: Any child whose brain is
befuddled with drugs can't learn much. It's vital to clean the drugs out of
the the child's system and substitute at least the beginning of selfesteem
and decisionmaking skills before he can learn.

In Colorado and other states, the Strengthening Families program carries
antidrug education outside of the classroom, and it, too, has had a
notably positive impact. Highrisk parents and their children are trained
separately, and then together, and the results in a wide range of ethnic
groups show clearly in reduced drug abuse and strengthened families with
fewer conflicts.

Are those kinds of interventions enough? No matter how effective they may
be, the number of children using drugs has increased for five consecutive
years.

When drug testing of students is proposed as a way of challenging narcotics
abuse headon, and really cleaning up a school, the plan usually fails.
This, despite a 1995 ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court that drug tests of
studentathletes are constitutionally permitted in public schools; the
question of testing all students was left unanswered.

Even a proposal this year calling for voluntary drug testing in MiamiDade
County didn't make it. The School Board backed off and defeated the plan
54; it would have applied to students whose parents agreed their children
should be tested randomly.

Granted, there are legitimate worries about intruding into a student's
privacy through drug testing. How is it different, though, from searching
luggage for drugs at an entry point to the U.S., or requiring a student to
have certain vaccinations and physical exams before entering school?

The goal of drug testing wouldn't be punishment, but detoxifying the
student to give him a chance at life. If a student failed a drug test, his
parents and teachers would be told but not the police.

He wouldn't be kicked out of school, but placed in a separate class for
inschool suspension until he was clean. Then, a special course for atrisk
students, such as Reconnecting Youth, would be an ideal way to prepare him
for a shift back into the mainstream, with a strong likelihood he'd stay
there.

For a student who refused to stop using narcotics, outpatient or
residential drug treatment for an extended time might be necessary, coupled
with compulsory attendance at Narcotics Anonymous or a similar selfhelp
group. For every student, the goal must be rehabilitation and a new start.

Drug testing should be tried in Florida schools, and the best way would be
with two comparable school systems, preferably large ones such as those in
Broward and Palm Beach counties. One school system would continue its
existing antidrug efforts, and the other would add random required drug
testing for middle and highschool students, while persisting in its
regular antidrug approaches.

Results would be tracked carefully and at the end of a year, they'd be
compared. It's highly likely that the system with drug testing would have
become a better place for children to learn, and to move forward, minds
clear, toward a promising adult life.

If that happens, as it probably would, what legitimate reasons would exist
to block drugtesting in all Florida schools? None.

Copyright © 1997, SunSentinel Company and South Florida Interactive, Inc.