DON'T HAND IN YOUR DRUG TEST

Wake County educators are giving their students a firsthand civics lesson
in the abuse of power and the absence of common sense. County educators
recently announced that they would start testing students in October for
contact with marijuana by rubbing their hands or possessions with litmus
paper. The litmus paper will chemically react with any marijuana residue.
Similar tests for other illegal substances will follow in the near future.

Wake County school administrators believe this test will easily pinpoint
which students have broken the law and make high schools a better place.
They could hardly be more wrong.

Giving students a rub-down with litmus paper only serves as an incredible
new way to circumstantially incriminate high school students. School
officials, favoring quick results over higher standards of both accuracy
and probable cause, plan to test students for drug residues if they "smell
something" or otherwise deem a drug test to be a reasonable course of
action by their own standards.

The officials are forgetting that recognizing and detecting illegal
substances is an integral part of law enforcement training and barely
mentioned during the course of a teacher's education.

The drug testing also raises a question challenging the capacity of a
school official to act in place of a trained, uniformed law enforcement
official.

The Supreme Court has historically supported the right of police to conduct
drug searches with reasonable suspicion and minimal invasion of privacy.

But police are trained individuals with a politically accepted niche in our
society to actively promote a drug-free America.

Teachers are meant to teach. They cannot be, nor should they be, surrogate
parents to hundreds of students at a time. It is neither their nor
administrators' proper duty to police the student body for illegal behavior.

Requiring teachers to play an even larger role as police officers could
easily led to an abuse of power. Before long, someone's math teacher could
go on a power-tripping rampage and single out eccentric or otherwise
undesirable students for the litmus tests in an effort to get them
suspended or expelled.

Additionally, the litmus tests make it likely that the innocent would be
rounded up just as much as the guilty.

The test was originally designed for detecting illegal substances on public
surfaces, bathrooms and lockers -- making it likely that random students
could test positive for drug residue merely by opening a classroom door or
flushing a toilet.

Because a large percentage of illegal drugs commonly found in high schools
do not work via contact through the skin, the test seems inherently and
unconstitutionally broad.

Throughout North Carolina, eyes will watch Wake County's program -- the
first of its kind in the Triangle. Should the program result in a large
number of suspensions, more school systems, including the Chapel-Carrboro
and Orange County systems, likely will adopt a similar program.

Wake County residents should lobby education officials to abandon the new
drug-testing policy. Other Triangle residents should push their officials
not to consider similar measures in the first place.

At the very least, school officials must be careful in overseeing its
administration so as not to intrude on the rights or time of students.

After all, we wouldn't want them to be late to civics class.