SCHOOL DRUG TESTS ARE NOT THE SOLUTION

The Issue: Schools have been allowed by the U.S. Supreme Court to subject
public school students participating in extracurricular activities to random
drug tests.

AN Oklahoma school's policy of conducting random drug tests on students
participating in extracurricular activities may be misguided, but the U.S.
Supreme Court has given its stamp of approval. Proponents of drug tests
would do better to extend them to all students. Other school-based drug
prevention programs remain preferable to intrusive searches.

Drug abuse, especially the increased use of crystal methamphetamine and the
amphetamine-based hallucinogen Ecstasy, is a problem in Hawaii's high
schools. However, it has not reached the "epidemic" level that Justice
Clarence Thomas described in allowing schools to resort to random testing of
students.

Public school students acquired their rights to be free from random searches
in 1985, when the Supreme Court rejected the previously prevailing idea that
principals and teachers were surrogate parents who could open any student's
locker or backpack. The court ruled then that school officials were
government officials bound by constitutional restrictions on searches.

Ten years later, the court held that students participating in sports could
be randomly tested for drugs. Last week's ruling widens the random testing
to include students participating in any extracurricular activity from the
French Club to the Future Farmers of America. Legal scholars and even some
of the justices say the ruling logically extends the subject of random
searches to the entire student body.

Drug testing has become common in college and professional sports. The
military conducts random tests of service personnel, and companies
occasionally test their employees to assure a drug-free workplace. However,
Hawaii high school students, even athletes, have not yet been subjected to
random drug tests. Keith Amemiya, executive director of the Hawaii High
School Athletic Association, has cited studies showing that students who
participate in sports are less likely to use drugs than is the general
student population.

Sports, along with other extracurricular activities, can influence student
participants to refrain from using illegal drugs. Random tests focused on
such groups could result only in drug users walking away from such groups,
increasing their susceptibility to further drug abuse.