ABBY SCHOOLS LIKELY TO SEE DRUG-SNIFFING DOGS BY JANUARY 2005

Despite vehement opposition from the B.C. Civil Liberties Association,
the majority of Abbotsford school board trustees are in favour of
implementing drug-sniffing dogs in schools.

The board officially voted on the drug dog policy last night [after
press deadline] but Joanne Field, Uultsje DeJong, John Smith and Don
Szostak have already been on record saying they support the motion. If
all stuck to their guns Monday night it would have given the board a
majority vote, meaning dogs could be in schools by as early as January.

That concerns BCCLA executive director Murray Mollard, who says
putting search dogs in schools "is a disastrous path that would
certainly lead to false allegations and wrongly stigmatize students as
drug users."

He added that reports show drug-sniffing dogs are correct only 20 per
cent of the time.

"The high rate of false alerts will most certainly lead to traumatic,
intrusive and demeaning experiences for students who will unavoidably
be stigmatized as drug users even when no drugs are found," he said in
a press release.

Abbotsford school trustee and policy committee chairman Don Szostak
refuted Mollard's claims of the dogs' success rate.

"The police use it as a tool," he said in a previous interview. "I
have to assume it has some worth. I have to guess that the dogs are
pretty effective."

"Fair enough, maybe they'll be wrong sometimes," he added. "I get
stopped at road checks. . . That's kind of the way it goes.
Law-abiding society gives up freedoms for greater safety."

School board vice-chairman John Smith noted that the policy, which
would see drug dogs enter random middle and high schools on a monthly
basis when students aren't around, is nothing new.

"This isn't a draconian step by the Abbotsford school district at
all," he said Monday, noting that drug-sniffing dogs were in some
Abbotsford schools as recently as the mid-1990s.

"Drugs are an extremely serious and escalating problem in our school
district and society at large," he said. "It's an awful situation and
if we can save just one or two kids . . . from becoming addicted to
crystal meth or heroin then this policy will have been worth it. If
that is inconvenient to some students and offensive to the civil
liberties people then I'm sorry."