SAY 'NO' TO DRUG TESTS

Schools have enough to do without another layer of social engineering. If it
was a serious proposal, not one of the politically useful but vague
pronouncements in President Bush's State of the Union address, then we
oppose spending $23 million to help schools run random drug tests on
children. The administration's drug czar, John Walters, has been on a
25-city tour promoting the idea to school officials, mostly in big cities.

That alone raises questions about the presumptions behind the plan
(suburban kids don't use drugs?). We don't understand the intended
purpose of the federal government helping probe and document the
internal chemistry of children.

True, you might find a little lawbreaker or two, who could then be
shuffled off to the juvenile justice system. You might scare a few
others into saying "no" when the joint comes around. You might be able
to certify that your sports teams are free of drugs (though not the
most common and most dangerous illegal teen drug - alcohol - and not,
without costly and more specific lab tests, the performance-enhancing
steroid group).

Against these debatable gains must be placed the costs, both in
dollars and in misguided energies and misplaced priorities.

For starters, this is not as simple as urinating in a cup. It can't be
done by the school nurse and a teacher's aide. To assure accurate
results and avoid lawsuits over embarrassing mistakes it would require
an iron-clad system of sampling, testing and reporting - a verifiable
chain-of-custody for samples akin to that required in criminal cases.

Big bucks.

And who volunteered the public schools as foot soldiers in the War on
Drugs? Schools have enough to do, and are being given more
responsibilities by the president's No Child Left Behind law. It's
certainly not the time to add another layer of specious social
engineering.

Make no mistake, we support rigorous academic testing and certifiable
progress. We just wish the money matched the moralizing. Perhaps the
$23 million could buy better textbooks or entice better-schooled
teachers into the challenging job. While children in school have fewer
rights to privacy than adults on the street, random testing veers
dangerously close to unreasonable search as described in the Bill of
Rights. Conservatives should join the ACLU in raising the alarm. And
it's all such a waste.

We would submit that chronic drug use is not the main reason children
do not do well in school.

Not even in the Top Ten. Lack of community and family support for
academics, lack of real-world consequences for failure and lack of
clear goals for being in school in the first place all rank higher.
The most troubled schools are in troubled communities that have come
unhooked from real job prospects or real participation in the larger
American community. Children there need dream testing more than drug
testing.