DRUGGED-DRIVING LAW A DIRECT ASSAULT ON OUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS, PROTECTIONS

Steven Mett's smug defense of Ohio's drugged-driving law, "Critic of
Drugged-Driving Law Forgets That Smoking Pot Remains Illegal,"(Athens NEWS,
March 10) neglects the fact that mandatory drug testing is a direct attack
on the Bill of Rights.

The right to be left alone is, in the words of the late Supreme Court
Justice Louis Brandeis, "the most comprehensive of rights and the right
most valued by civilized men." The right to privacy is an implicit
guarantee of the Constitution; yet it's the right most often ignored by
government officials.

Drug testing presumably innocent individuals as a condition of operating a
motor vehicle is a repudiation of everything America stands for. Drug
testing reverses the presumption of innocence upon which much of our legal
system is built.

The Fourth Amendment protects the right of the people to be secure in their
persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and
seizures. Many courts have ruled that to require a urine sample to be
analyzed is a search under the Fourth Amendment.

What good is the Bill of Rights when "we the people" are forced to waive
our constitutional right to privacy, one piss test at a time.

There is no place in this country for mandatory drug testing -- it is
fundamentally anti-American.

Walter F. Wouk, director

The Thomas Paine Project

Cobleskill, N.Y.