FEDS - DON'T PUNISH KIDS OVER DRUGS

WASHINGTON - The federal drug director is urging schools to offer
help to students who use drugs, not just toss them out.

Guidelines in a report released Thursday by the Office of National
Drug Control Policy urge treatment and counseling for drug-using high
schoolers rather than simply suspending or expelling them.

``The goal is to say we believe we can do a better job of making kids
healthy,'' said John P. Walters, who directs the office. Kicking
students out of school without treatment can create ``drug-using
dropouts,'' an even bigger problem, the report said.

The advice challenges policies in many districts to automatically
suspend or expel students caught with drugs.

The new policy 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.

The new guide cautioned that the decision to implement a testing
program shouldn't be left up to an individual or even a school board,
but should include public input, including that of opponents.