NOTE, LEBANON: DRUG TESTING IS NOT EFFECTIVE

The Lebanon School Board members who took a cautious
attitude about implementing a school drug-testing program are on the
right track. An even better approach would be to scrap the proposal
entirely, especially as it relates to random drug testing.

Last year, the National Institute on Drug Abuse released its 500-page
report on adolescent drug use. It said drug education and parental
involvement are key to keeping adolescents off drugs. In unusually
strong terms, the report stated that drug testing was ineffective.
Incidents of drug use were no different at schools where random drug
testing was implemented from schools that had no drug testing. What
was different was that testing was expensive and tended to alienate
and humiliate students and make them more distrustful of adults and of
authority.

At the Central Linn School District, the only one in the area that
randomly drug tests its students, Superintendent Max Harrell said "a
very small percent" of the students tested have been found to be
taking illegal drugs. This begs the question, so why do it?

Even districts that used a more comprehensive drug test to identify
drug-involved kids found that testing was not cost-effective. In
Dublin, Ohio, the school district spent $35,000 a year to test 1,473
students at a cost of $24 each. Eleven students tested positive,
making the cost of identifying them $3,200 a student.

What makes less sense about the initial Lebanon proposal was that it
would require students who want to take part in extracurricular
activities to take drug tests. It defies logic to assume that
drug-testing students that want to be part of extracurricular
activities will identify many drug users.

The same report that found drug testing ineffective also found that
what was most effective was simple: Caring parents and adult role
models who spent time with adolescents and really listened to their
concerns. Unsurprisingly, active, involved students also are less
likely to turn to drugs for refuge or recreation.

Instead of paying a lab to run a drug-testing program, the school
district could hire a school resource officer or counselor to be
available to students as a sounding board.

Even implementing more after school activities to give students a
sense of belonging and purpose would be more statistically effective
than random drug testing, an idea whose time has come - and gone.