POP QUIZ? GROUP WANTS MANDATORY DRUG TESTING OF STUDENTS

The perception of rampant teenage OxyContin abuse in Juneau is
fomenting support for mandatory random drug testing of high school
students in sports and activities.

A group calling itself Taking Action has formed and is pushing for
drug testing in schools. Earlier this week, Juneau-Douglas High
School football coach Bill Chalmers told the School Board that he was
considering quitting coaching if the district doesn't implement a
drug testing program by the fall.

Jeff Duvernay, a member of Taking Action and president of the local
Little League, said a drug testing program would be a tool to help
curb the rampant use of OxyContin among teenagers in Juneau.
OxyContin is the name brand of an extended-release form of oxycodone,
an opiate medication prescribed for pain.

"We all are of the opinion that we want a program that is not
punitive in nature, meaning we're not looking to punish everybody,"
he said. "What we're looking for is ... to catch those that are using
and identify them so they can get help, and ... provide some
incentive for kids to not use. That's the most important thing."

The common thread among members of Taking Action is they all have a
background in local athletics, Duvernay said. Members are concerned
with what they believe is a growing problem, and say random drug
testing will be a deterrent to help kids stay off of drugs.

"The teachers and coaches need these tools so they can weed out the
users on their teams and get them help and get them off the team so
they're not influencing other folks," he said.

The Sitka and Ketchikan school districts have implemented random drug
testing programs so Juneau should do the same, Duvernay said.

"It has historical precedence," he said. "It's got precedence with
the United States Supreme Court and it has been done in the state of
Alaska, so we have state precedence as well."

Douglas Mertz, a lawyer with a background in civil liberties that is
well known for defending former JDHS student Joseph Frederick in the
"Bong Hits 4 Jesus" court case, said that schools have the legal
right to drug test students that are involved in sports or
extracurricular activities without any specific knowledge that a
student is using drugs.

"Beyond that you can't do it, which really does tie the hands of the
authorities," he said. "But it reflects the tensions that already
exist between individual liberty and the need to do something
effective about drug problems."

Mertz said it's not a matter of fairness, it's simply something
schools have the option of doing.

School Board President Mark Choate said there are still many
questions about how to implement such a program. He said the board
first must get a feeling of what needs to be accomplished, decide how
exactly the program would work, and figure out how to fund the drug testing.

"The best I can say is we have agreed to get the process going of
evaluating it to determine whether or not it can be done, and if so
how quickly," he said.

The School Board has only one more scheduled regular meeting before
the school year ends and does not have regular meetings during the
summer break. There are still some significant issues before the
School Board, Choate said, like hiring a new superintendent and
reviewing the budgeting process.

"Whatever we do it can't be a piecemeal solution," he said. "It has
to be fairly broad. Obviously the desire is there to get something
going, but again, how quickly we can do it I don't know."

Sandi Wagner, a coach and the athletics and activities director at
JDHS, said this issue has been brought up before. A group came before
the administration nearly 20 years ago to try and implement a drug
testing program.

"They went in and got all the information, tried to figure out how to
pay for it, and the superintendent's response was that if it
'infringes on people's rights, it's going no further.' And so it was
dropped at that point," she said.

Wagner said there is a lot of support from coaches to implement a
random drug testing program in the district. She personally supports
the idea as well.

Wagner said she believes Juneau does have a drug and alcohol problem
within the school district, and that randomly testing students would
help curtail it.

"Do I believe that it would help? Yes," she said. "Both Ketchikan and
Sitka have shown with their random drug testing, when they first
started it they caught a lot of kids. Now the numbers have dropped
drastically. It gives the kids a reason they can't use."

Wagner said a lot can be learned by participating in activities and sports.

"I think it's one of the best teaching tools that we have, but the
idea is to keep our kids focused on positive things rather than
negative things," she said. "If we have a majority of kids involved
in athletics and activities using, then we are failing them and we
need to figure out a way to change that."

Said Choate: "I'm a big supporter of activities in the sense that I
think they attract kids to school, they help kids bond and I want the
schools to work, but I don't want them to feel like prisons."

Duvernay said the group Taking Action wants a program to be
implemented as soon as possible to prevent more kids' from getting
hooked on drugs.

"It crosses all boundaries," he said. "It's the rich kids, it's the
poor kids, it's the cool kids, it's the nerds - it's everybody. There
is no one subgroup of these kids that is immune from this problem."

Choate said the OxyContin and other drug issues in Juneau are a
school problem but also a community problem.

"Sometimes there is a tendency to sort of go, 'well if we just do X
that will solve these problems,'" he said. "I think the alienation
that leads kids to use drugs is kind of a community climate issue
that we have to deal with in a broad variety of ways. I'm not at all
opposed to random drug testing if that will be an effective way to
help, but I think there's more to it than that."