DRUG-TESTING DECISION: POWER TO TEST, POWER TO RUIN

Some things are better left alone, and drug-testing high school students
who participate in innocuous extracurricular activities such as
cheerleading and chess would appear to be one of them. So why did the U.S.
Supreme Court rule last week that the nation's 15,500 public school
districts can impose random drug tests on Biff and Muffy even if
administrators have no firm evidence that students are using contraband?
The reason has more to do with reducing peer pressure than in actually
nabbing students whose idea of high school is more high and less school.
About 7 million high school students who participate in extracurricular
activities may be affected by the 5-4 court ruling.

As it sometimes does, the court majority stretched legal reasoning a long
way to justify its decision. Basically, the court said, students who
volunteer for extracurricular activities surrender a measure of privacy
because they are representing their school. Similar reasoning was applied
to a 1995 decision in which the Supreme Court authorized random drug
testing of high school athletes. The court also justified its decision last
week by saying order and discipline must take precedence over privacy
rights in the nation's high schools. Most people would not argue with that
position, though taken too far it could threaten civil liberties.

Now that they have the authority to impose random drug testing on students
in extracurricular activities, the nation's school districts have a
commensurate responsibility to use this new power wisely. It is a power
ripe for abuse, especially because drug testing has a checkered history of
false positives.

In fact, we would be more comfortable with the ruling if school
administrators were required to get a judge's permission before conducting
random drug testing, and then only when sufficient evidence of drug abuse
in a high school is presented to justify this extraordinary step. The power
to test is also the power to ruin.