DOLE LINKS LICENSE TO DRUG TEST

Plan Envisions Eagerness To Drive As Incentive For Teens To Stay Clean

Elizabeth Dole wants to require all teenagers to pass a drug test before
getting a driver's license.

Dole, the Republican U.S. Senate candidate and a former transportation
secretary, has promised to push for a federal law pressuring states to
enforce such a measure.

"Wouldn't that help them understand how important it is to be drug free?"
Dole asked at a recent campaign stop in Washington, N.C. "It's not cool (to
abuse drugs). It kills."

Then-President Bill Clinton proposed a nearly identical measure in 1996
while campaigning against Dole's husband, former Sen. Bob Dole, and offered
federal grants to states the following year. Campaign officials for
Elizabeth Dole said they were unaware of the Clinton initiative.

Dole included the pre-license drug test as part of her "Dole Plan for North
Carolina" this year, proposing that teens who test positive must complete a
drug counseling course and pass a subsequent test before getting a license.

The test could be bypassed. Parents who don't want their children to take a
drug test could just say no and waive the requirement, said Mary Brown
Brewer, Dole's communications director.

"You can't solely address (illegal drugs) from the supply side. You have to
address it from the demand side," Brewer said. "When you turn 16, you look
so forward to getting that driver's license ... This is a pretty strong
incentive not to do anything that would prevent you from getting that
driver's license."

Dole has made "less government" a campaign mantra, as have many
Republicans, which makes it striking that she would embrace an invasive
expansion of government duties and authority. Last year, nearly 62,000 N.C.
teens got their first driver's license.

A spokesman for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said he
was unaware of any states enacting such a program after the Clinton push.

Dole's opponent, Democrat Erskine Bowles, said he would like to talk with
law enforcement officials, parents and teenagers before proposing such a
measure.

The testing presents practical obstacles and legal questions. State motor
vehicles administrations would suddenly face the costs of processing drug
tests through a laboratory, not to mention the idea of testing youngsters
who haven't been accused of anything. U.S. courts, though, have repeatedly
upheld the constitutionality of drug tests.

Several states have zero tolerance laws on alcohol use, requiring that
teens lose their license if caught driving with any of alcohol in their
blood. The alcohol tests, though, are administered after a youth has been
stopped on suspicion of drinking.

Substance-abuse experts said drug testing works as an incentive to keep
youths from abusing drugs but likely only until they pass that checkpoint.

"(Drug) testing has always been a false promise that it would help us
somehow by threatening people and make them stop so they wouldn't get into
trouble," said John P. Morgan, a physician and City University of New York
medical professor who has studied drug testing for 15 years.

He said the vast majority of positive drug tests detect nothing stronger
than marijuana, and occasional smokers need only stop for a couple of weeks
to pass.

Carl Shantzis, executive director of Substance Abuse Prevention Services in
Charlotte, said prevention policy requires follow-up.

"Once (teenagers) get a license," Shantzis said, "the question is what kind
of other incentives are there to keep them from abusing alcohol or other
drugs."