DRUG TESTS HAVE DRAWBACKS

Brevard County School Superintendent Richard DiPatri is smart to consider
the advantages and disadvantages of drug testing.

The Florida counties currently drug testing students who wish to enroll in
extracurricular activities might want to follow DiPatri's lead and educate
themselves on the drawbacks of such testing.

Student involvement in extracurricular activities such as sports has been
shown to reduce drug use. It keeps 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 such activities.

Drug testing also might compel users of relatively harmless marijuana to
switch to harder drugs to avoid testing positive. 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 are water-soluble and exit the body quickly.

Drug-testing profiteers do not readily volunteer this information, for
obvious reasons.

The most commonly abused drug and the one most closely associated with
violent behavior 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.

By Robert Sharpe, Program Officer, Drug Policy Alliance, Washington, D.C.