DRUG POLICY SADLY MISGUIDED

Greg Johnson (Letters, July 13) defends the Supreme Court's latest drug war
exemption to the Constitution by suggesting that students enrolled in
extracurricular activities will look forward to drug tests. Being forced to
urinate in front of an adult is not exactly the kind of validation most
teenagers seek.

Student involvement in extracurricular activities has been shown to reduce
drug use. They keep kids busy during the hours they are most likely to get
into trouble. Forcing students to undergo degrading urine tests as a
prerequisite will only discourage participation in such activities.

Drug testing may also compel users of relatively harmless marijuana to
switch to harder drugs to avoid testing positive. Despite a short-lived
high, marijuana is the only drug that stays in the human body long enough
to make urinalysis a deterrent. Marijuana's organic metabolites are
fat-soluble and can linger for days.

Synthetic drugs like ecstasy, meth, LSD or heroin are water-soluble and
exit the body quickly. If you think students don't know this, think again.
Anyone capable of running a search on the Internet can find out how to
thwart a drug test. Drug testing profiteers do not readily volunteer this
information, for obvious reasons.

The most commonly abused drug is almost impossible to detect with
urinalysis. That drug is alcohol, and it takes far more student lives every
year than all illegal drugs combined. Instead of wasting money on
counterproductive drug tests, schools should invest in reality-based drug
education.

Robert Sharpe, M.P.A., Program Officer

TIME TO CHANGE WAR ON DRUGS

There is something radically wrong with President Bush's wet noodle
speeches dealing with continual corporate fraud.

The war on people who use or deal in certain drugs not approved by the
state, called the "war on drugs," face mandatory minimum sentences,
property forfeiture, and even the death sentence. All this even though the
activity is consensual. Since Nixon's time the war on drugs has cost the
American taxpayer nearly $200 billion dollars. Another $20 billion is being
spent this year.

Now, in corporate crime, thousands of employees are ruined through loss of
retirement and employment while CEOs, etc. make off with millions. Doubling
the sentence of laws with no teeth amounts to no change.

It is time for taxpayers to demand that our government stops acting like a
clown. Lawmakers need to make a distinction between areas where people are
really hurt and need protection from emotional charged trivia.

Jack Satkoski, Sandpoint