POLICING THEMSELVES

The cold, hard numbers presented by law enforcement officials served to
startle and alarm the high school students.

In the Ojai Valley alone, drug-related arrests have jumped 164 percent --
from 174 in 1998 to more than 460 in 2002.

Message received.

Students at Nordhoff and Chaparral high schools will soon be subject to
random drug testing. It's an announcement that, under normal circumstances,
would elicit protests and howls from privacy advocates. But not this time.
You see, it was a group of high school students that came up with the idea
for the pilot program, which is completely voluntary.

The district will compile a list of volunteers and randomly pick about 20
to be tested each month. Testing will be done for eight substances,
including alcohol, marijuana, OxyContin, cocaine, amphetamines, opiates and
barbiturates.

If a test is negative, the lab will inform parents by letter. If a test is
positive, the sample will be retested. If still positive, the students'
parents will be notified.

"We're not interested in catching kids," said James Berube, the school
district's assistant superintendent of Business Services. "We're interested
in helping kids in our community."

And that's exactly what this program will do. Because, in effect, the
random testing gives the students "a magic card they can pull out of their
sleeve." The out being the threat of drug testing and parents being
notified if the test is positive.

We applaud the students for being proactive and saying, "Yes, there is a
drug problem in the Ojai Valley and we're going to do something about it."

As the problem is not Ojai's alone, other school districts may want to
adopt a similar program.