DRUG TESTING WASTE

Long Court Battle Coming

Obviously, no schoolteacher should show up for class reeking of
whisky, or puffing cigarettes, or stoned on pot. As far as we know,
none of these ills afflicts Kanawha County schools seriously.

But the school board is so obsessed by the possibility that a teacher
might use dope that it is squandering a lot of taxpayer money on the
hazard. So far, the board has spent $25,000 - the school taxes from
perhaps 1,000 families - for lawyers defending the board's attempt to
impose random drug testing on teachers.

If teacher unions succeed in defeating the board in court - as
they've already done, partly - then Kanawha taxpayers presumably must
pay legal bills of the unions, as well.

On the other hand, if the board wins a looming court battle over the
issue, then taxpayers will be stuck with steep laboratory costs of
all tests that are performed.

It's a lose-lose proposition. It's too much waste over a trivial
topic.

Frankly, we've always felt that pot should be decriminalized, because
it's no more harmful than alcohol and tobacco, which are legal. Of
course, all intoxicants should be banned for airline pilots, railway
engineers, armed police, school bus drivers and others who hold
people's lives in their hands.

Teachers don't have such life-or-death sway over pupils. That's why
it was odd when the Kanawha board began its hunt for possible pot
puffers. When the issue reached U.S. District Court, Judge Joseph
Robert Goodwin agreed. He said the board showed no evidence of
actual harm to students, so it would violate the Bill of Rights
protection against "unreasonable" searches to force randomly chosen
teachers to urinate in bottles.

"To justify such a suspicionless search," the judge wrote, "I must
not engage in a speculative exercise to find remote risks of horrible
disasters. ... A train, nuclear reactor or firearm in the hands of
someone on drugs presents an actual concrete risk to numerous
people. The same cannot be said for a teacher wielding a history textbook."

Goodwin temporarily blocked the random test plan from starting last
month. But now the issue is heading for a long trial. Last week, the
five-member Kanawha school board met in secret to discuss the
litigation. The board's lawyer said a two-year courtroom struggle may
ensue. Only one member, Robin Rector, opposes the random testing.

Instead of wasting more taxpayer money on this dubious crusade, we
think the board should simply quit. If any teacher acts weird in
class, then by all means apply a drug test. But it's overkill to
subject all faculties of all schools to hit-and-miss testing, just on
the chance that one teacher might have smoked a joint.