DRUG CZAR: TEST KIDS

With New England's governors looking grave yesterday after an unprecedented
summit on the region's heroin epidemic, White House Drug Czar John Walters
seized the moment to roll a political grenade into Faneuil Hall: random
school drug testing.

"This is a silver bullet," Walters told the governors. "I know this is a
tool that will make a difference."

But local educators and addiction medicine specialists remain wary of
casting a drug dragnet across Bay State schools. Even Gov. Mitt Romney, who
said he was horrified by surging heroin use among kids here, kept his
distance from the idea.

"I haven't formed an opinion on that," Romney told reporters after the drug
summit.

Dr. Punyamurtula Kishore, an addiction medicine specialist who runs a
statewide chain of addiction clinics, sees some merit in the idea - along
with a few flaws.

For starters, processing urine for drug testing costs about $200 a sample.
Saliva testing costs more than that and only shows if a person has drugs in
his or her system at that moment.

"You have to collect it appropriately, transport it appropriately. Give
some course to appeal a positive. It has to be interpreted by a physician,"
Kishore said. "It opens up a whole can of worms."

Kishore also questions whether screening in schools would be effective
because drug use among kids tends to be sporadic.

"If you are testing for drugs, what are you testing for?" Kishore added.
"Are you going to test for smoking and drinking too?"

Random drug testing in schools also raises a host of legal concerns,
according to Nancy Murray of the local chapter of the American Civil
Liberties Union.

"It really does run roughshod over the notion of individualized suspicion,"
Murray said.

A 1985 U.S. Supreme Court decision set a legal standard allowing drug
testing of specific students only when educators had a reasonable suspicion
of illegal drug use by them. But two subsequent high court decisions have
eroded that standard, Murray said, by allowing random drug testing of
students involved in extracurricular activities.

Drug screening of the wider student body hasn't been tried in Massachusetts
and undoubtedly would spark court challenges. Walters said such testing
won't be mandated by state or federal governments, but he urged local
communities to consider it as they grapple with drug use among kids. "It's
not about finding and punishing children. It can't be by law," Walters
said. "It's about identifying those that have a problem."

Chelsea Superintendent Irene Cornish said she sees the idea as needlessly
drastic."I'm not saying that we don't have students who are using illegal
drugs in our schools. Certainly, every district struggles with that
problem," Cornish said. "But I don't find a wholesale step of that nature
necessary right now."

The ACLU's Murray agreed, saying most educators can detect ongoing drug use
simply by observing student behavior."It's just putting the emphasis in the
wrong place," Murray said. "We don't need our schools to be more like prisons."

But there's no denying that more and more students will be headed to prison
- - or the morgue - if New England can't kick its alarming heroin habit. The
region's streets have been flooded by cheap, super-pure South American
smack that has its claws in children as young as 13 and 14, U.S. Drug
Enforcement Agency Administrator Karen Tandy told the governors.

"You might as well be sitting at the border of Colombia in this Northeast
region," she said.

Walters cited survey findings that nearly 8 percent of New England children
between the ages of 12 and 17 are substance abusers or drug dependent. Most
other regions of the country are below 5 percent, he said.