ADDICTED TO LIFE

School Drug Testing

Hysteria, Mistrust, Ruined Lives ... Yes, It's A Witch Hunt

SALEM - Following an outbreak of strange behavior among young girls,
authorities have called for random "witch-testing" of other children
and adults the girls were in contact with.

The test involves a special cake made with rye meal and the afflicted
girls' urine, which is fed to a dog. According to the test
administrator, this "counter-magic" will reveal the identity of the
witches, since dogs are known to be their helpers. Concerns about the
test's accuracy prompted one villager to respond: "Law-abiding
citizens have nothing to fear from testing. Unless, of course, you are
a witch."

That was in 1692. Explanations for what happened next range from bored
kids acting out stories they heard, to personal vendettas, local
politics and a failed frontier war against the Wabanakis Indians. My
favorite theory though, was that a fungus in the rye crop (ergot)
could have caused convulsions and LSD-type hallucinations. However,
the evidence suggests it's more likely that paranoia and jealousy were
the real causes of the hysteria that swept through Salem.

Within a few months, hundreds of men and women were accused of being
witches. Dozens were imprisoned, and many of them "confessed" to
witchcraft. Nineteen were hanged, one was pressed to death with
stones, three died in prison and two dogs were executed for being
witches' accomplices. And it all started with the "witch cake" test.

Although it's not clear to me how the dog would identify the witch
after eating the rye and urine mixture, this much we know: Mary Sibley
asked Tituba, a slave from Barbados (where they presumably knew about
voodoo and such) to use "counter-magic" to find out who had bewitched
the children. So Tituba baked the witch cake ... and was then accused
of being a witch herself. Which just goes to prove how good intentions
can backfire in unintended ways. Tituba confessed to practicing
witchcraft, then named two other women as suspected witches to get the
ball rolling.

I understand why rational people would think drug testing in our
schools is a good idea. They see the headlines and TV news clips of
teachers and school janitors being led away in handcuffs, and the
knee-jerk reaction is to lock them all up before they "infect" our
children. They hear about studies that show half of all kids have
tried one drug or another, and they want assurances that something is
being done about it.

But with all due respect, drug testing is not the answer. Here's why
it flunks the common-sense test:

It only deters use of drugs that are being tested for. Here in
Hawaii, the construction industry also is proposing testing of
workers. Yet toxicology reports show that the biggest cause of
accidents at mainland construction sites is alcohol -- a legal drug.
So students, teachers and school employees can still drink all they
want on weekends, and the tests won't deter that. It's no coincidence
that binge drinking is now a major problem on college campuses.

Students might turn to more dangerous drugs that don't stay in the
system as long as illicit substances such as marijuana. They also
might try potentially deadly alternatives like chugging cough syrup or
"huffing" inhalants. Can we test for all those things, too?

Testing catches users, not necessarily dealers. Moreover, just as
bootleggers and moonshiners adapted during Prohibition, pushers are
always adjusting to the market place. Burn pakalolo fields, and
crystal meth takes pot's place. Crack down on ice, cocaine sales go
up. Bust the coke dealers, and someone will sell kids prescription
meds like OxyContin -- or Xanax.

It's costly and unreliable. A spokesperson for Hawaii teachers
estimates it would cost close to half a million dollars a year to test
all 13,000 teachers. How much more would it cost to test students?

There have also been reports that up to 30 percent of such tests
result in "false positives," largely from commonly used medicines.
Let's say "random" testing was used to cut down the total cost. Fine.
But if even a small percentage of the tests turn out to be wrong, how
much will the state pay in damages from lawsuits initiated by teachers
or students whose lives have been ruined?

There are saner alternatives. The Star-Bulletin recently ran a story
on counseling programs being offered in high schools to address
substance abuse problems. Instead of treating kids as criminals, the
counselors teach students about addiction and help them take steps
toward recovery. (You can read that story on the Web at
http://starbulletin.com/2006/12/28/news/story02.html)

Although advocates of drug testing say they would provide the same
type of help for students or teachers who have a drug problem, they
don't say how you undo the stigma of a false-positive test result or
gossip that turns a sniffle from the flu into "proof" that a teacher
is snorting cocaine in the faculty restroom.

So please, before we get too carried away, take a deep breath and call
off the drug-sniffing dogs. Perhaps we also should remember an
important axiom of American law that came out of the Salem witch
trials. In a work titled "Cases of Conscience," Increase Mather wrote
it was "better that ten suspected witches should escape than one
innocent person should be condemned."

Repeat after me: Just Say No to drug testing. It won't be random, and
it will cost us far more in money and personal freedom than we stand
to gain from another misguided witch hunt.

Rich Figel is a screenwriter who lives in Kailua. He has been clean
and sober for 18 years. His column appears periodically in the Insight
section.