RESPONSE TO SCHOOLS' DRUG TEST MIXED

BOCA RATON -- Enthusiasm over a new drug testing method recently unveiled
at Olympic Heights High School and several other south county schools seems
to be largely reserved to those who will never be subjected to it.

Several parents said they didn't feel the new swab-and-spray test -- which
administrators use to check students who they are "reasonably suspicious"
have just used marijuana, cocaine, amphetamines or heroine -- is an
invasion of privacy.

"I don't think there's a problem with that," Sandy Parrott, said Friday as
she waited to pick up her son.

Another mother, who asked not to be named, said she wishes the school had
advised parents ahead of time that they were starting a new test. At
several schools, including Olympic Heights and Boca Raton High, parents are
notified only if their children are tested. But the mother said she doesn't
mind the concept of testing. "If a kid comes to class stoned, they deserve
to get busted," she said.

"I think it should be a joint decision (to test) between parents and
students," Samantha Yetman, 16, said after school Friday.

School police and administrators said the tests won't be used to prosecute
students. They call the kits, which are headed to all district high schools
by the end of the academic year, a tool to help parents start talking to
their children about possible drug use.

The kits -- paid for with a $650,000 National Institute of Justice grant --
are just the latest in a series of ineffective and unfair methods targeting
students, according to the Drug Policy Alliance, a nonprofit advocacy
group. The New York-based organization frequently teams with the ACLU to
lobby for the elimination of student drug testing.

Drug Policy Alliance recently sent a booklet to 24,000 education
administrators around the country, including Palm Beach County, focusing on
a federally funded 2002 University of Michigan study that they say supports
their claim.

Testing like Palm Beach County's "is based on shaky reasonable suspicion,"
Daniel Abrahamson, legal affairs director for the Drug Policy Alliance,
said. "You've got all the ingredients of misuse and abuse." Also, "isn't it
cheaper and better to find a counselor who the student trusts to discuss
any problems?"