SCHOOLS URGED TO TREAT, NOT TOSS, DRUG USERS

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 yesterday by the Office of National Drug
Control Policy urge treatment and counseling for high-school drug users
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 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 who are users 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 26 or older were
first-time marijuana users by 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 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 U.S. 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 on testing shouldn't be left up
to an individual or even a school board, but should include public input,
including that of foes.