FEDS: TREAT, DON'T SUSPEND, DRUG USERS

DURHAM -- Durham Public Schools is among districts whose policies urge
treatment -- not just suspension -- for drug-using students.

"We do have support services," said district spokesman Michael Yarbrough.

Last week, the nation's anti-drug chief said schools should do more to make
sure that students with drug or alcohol problems get help.

Those students are among the most likely to drop out, said John P. Walters,
director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

"The goal is to say we believe we can do a better job of making kids
healthy," Walters said in a press conference in Washington. He announced
results of a study with a guide that suggests school districts that
automatically suspend or expel students caught with drugs reconsider the
practice.

Durham Public Schools policy requires long-term suspension for students who
possess drugs or alcohol or are under their influence at school but allows
exceptions for a first offense that doesn't involve dealing drugs.
Counseling or other "corrective education" is required in such instances.

When Durham students are suspended for drugs, when they return to school
they must participate in a student support group there, unless they are
receiving counseling elsewhere, the district's drug policy says.

The new national study was announced a day after the agency released a
separate report in Miami showing a decline in first-time marijuana users
last year.

While that study found fewer adolescents are first-time marijuana users
than in previous years, it said those that are risk succumbing to long-term
drug addiction.

"Marijuana is not the soft drug," Walters said. He said government,
community agencies and parents must marshal their powers to prevent and
treat marijuana abuse.

According to the study, 62 percent of cocaine users aged 26 or older were
first-time marijuana users by the age of 14.

The idea that marijuana leads to harder drugs was challenged by the
National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, based in
Washington, D.C., which said only one out of every 104 first-time marijuana
users ever uses heroin or cocaine.

While the study released Thursday provides guidelines for handling student
drug users, final decisions on what to do remain in the hands of school
districts.

Dan Langan, an Education Department spokesman, said, "The guide is a tool
and it's a helpful tool, but how a district and a school choose to
implement any recommendations in the guide is up to them."

Kathleen Lyons, spokeswoman for the National Education Association, said
her group would back the new guidelines.

"That's what we would endorse, helping kids, not simply punishing them,"
she said. "It doesn't do anybody any good just to take a drug test and kick
the kid out of school - where's he going to go? It doesn't solve anyone's
problem and may, in fact, worsen it."

The guide says schools should "proceed with caution" when testing students
for drugs, making sure they "have a good idea of precisely what drugs their
students are using" before beginning testing.

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in June that schools can require students to
submit to drug tests before participating in competitive after-school
activities, even if they have no particular reason to suspect wrongdoing.
Drug tests had been allowed previously just for student-athletes.

That decision gave schools a free hand to test more than half the estimated
14 million American high school students. The court stopped short of
allowing random tests for any student, but several justices have indicated
they are interested in answering that question at some point.

Many schools test athletes for drugs, but wider drug testing remains
relatively rare among the nation's 15,500 public school districts.