APPLAUD TOUGH-LOVE DRUG TESTING KITS

Down in Lincoln, a 46-year-old former police officer and her 24-year-old
daughter have been arrested and charged with felonies in regard to an
alleged plot to manufacture and distribute methamphetamine.

Diana Short, the first woman to serve on the Lincoln Police Department,
faces decades in prison for her alleged role in the scheme, which police
say also involved her daughter, Brianna Strohl. Last December, state police
raided the home Diana Short shared with her husband John, where they
discovered 25 marijuana plants and hallucinogenic mushroom spores.

You could say the Short family is in a world of trouble. Perhaps if they
lived in Bartonville, someone might have intervened before it came to these
headlines. That's where the local police department is distributing
confidential drug and alcohol testing kits to parents to administer to
their kids if they suspect abuse of booze, meth, marijuana, cocaine, opium.

That might be easier said than done, as getting a 17-year-old to sit still
for a drug test in the kitchen might be an accomplishment in and of itself.
Of course, if Mom and Dad are using themselves - reference the story above
- - they probably won't be heading down to the Bartonville Police Department
to pick up this kit in the first place.

Still, we much prefer the voluntary, tough-love approach to the
government-pushing-the-civil-rights-envelope method (read mandatory drug
testing at schools) of addressing a plague that devastates families,
neighborhoods and communities. A recent National Institute on Drug Abuse
survey showed that half of all American high school seniors have
experimented with some type of illegal drug. Meth is becoming the scourge
of rural parts of the state. Even healthy athletes stuff their bodies with
steroids. Whatever the reasons - the high or the performance enhancement
that leads to other benefits - people are willing to take enormous risks.
It's just not worth the potential loss of reputation, job, freedom, health,
even life.

Of course, the most abused drug of all, and the most overlooked, is
alcohol. It was allegedly instrumental in the death of a 34-year-old Havana
man a week ago. James Maberry had just closed the Bloomington Pizza Hut and
was heading home when his truck was hit by a van driven by John W. Davis,
39, of Atlanta. Like the Short family described above, Davis also is in a
world of trouble, jailed with a couple of aggravated DUI charges against
him, perhaps worse coming. Meanwhile, six children have been left without a
father.

Once upon a time DUIs were greeted by law enforcement with a wink and a
nod. The evidence is overwhelming that the crackdown on drunk driving has
influenced behavior for the better, if injury and fatality statistics are
any indication. Perhaps these testing kits will achieve the same.

In any event, apparently nobody was successful in getting to Davis before
he got behind the wheel. Would he say it was worth it now? Is it ever?