MAYOR WANTS TO AID PARENTS IN TESTING KIDS FOR DRUGS

The mayor of New Bedford has announced a first-of-its-kind plan to offer
parents the option of having their middle and high school kids randomly
drug tested.

"This is not intended to be a punishment, but rather to be an assist in
what are difficult times in family management (while we are also) looking
to increase productivity in the classroom," said Mayor Frederick M. Kalisz
Jr. Kalisz's suggestion came on the heels of this week's proposal from
White House drug czar John Walters to implement random school drug testing
in light of the heroin epidemic plaguing New England.

This summer in New Bedford, a 14-year-old boy was stabbed to death in a
crackhouse, forcing the city to face its large-scale drug problem."You're
looking at peer pressure, experimentation and you're looking at trickery,"
he said.

The program, the details of which the mayor and School Superintendent
Michael Longo are fine-tuning, would allow a parent to force their child to
provide a random urine sample. The results would be mailed only to the
child's parents, who would then be able to use existing city hotlines to
get their child counseling and treatment.

Ashleigh Pierce, 16, a junior at New Bedford High School, said she didn't
like the idea, adding she thought her parents might sign her up. "That's
invading privacy," she said.

Nancy Murray, spokeswoman for the American Civil Liberties Union, agrees.

"We're going back to when schools were seen as an extension of the home,"
she said. "My sense is they shouldn't go down this road. They have enough
to do in educating the kids in what the constitution says."