WHY DRUG TESTS FLUNK

According to the students at rural Rushville Consolidated High School,
there are a dozen ways to pass a drug test. You can march down to the local
video store and buy a packet of "Karma" urine-cleansing powder. You can
toss salt in your urine sample or drop in a strand of hair coated with
hairspray.

More often than not, it's simply a matter of choosing the right kinds of
drugs, say the teens -- Ecstasy and alcohol disappear from your system
within hours; marijuana can take up to 30 days.

Some of these methods -- such as the hairspray and the salt -- sound more
mythic than magic, but whatever the kids are doing, it seems to work.

The drug testing vans roll up to the Rushville campus every few weeks, and
25 students are randomly asked to produce a urine sample; yet hardly
anybody is ever get caught with drugs in their system. And it's not because
they aren't doing drugs.

"I'd guess 75 percent of my class has tried marijuana," senior Adam Sadler
says, sitting outside the cafeteria during a sunny lunchtime in April; his
friends, perhaps trying to impress, estimate even higher. "A lot of kids do
drugs at this school; though it kind of depends on who you are," one says.
"The thing is to just make sure you pass the tests."

For six years, Rushville Consolidated has required random drug tests from
between 75 to 90 percent of its 900 or so students, including anyone who
participates in extracurricular activities or plays sports. Cheerleaders
get tested; so does everyone who drives a car to school. Students must
"volunteer" to pee in a cup in order to attend the senior prom. If they get
caught with drugs, alcohol or tobacco in their systems, they are denied
participation in these activities until they can prove they're clean.

It is an aggressive routine that is nearly identical to that of Tecumseh
High School in Oklahoma, a program that attracted intense national scrutiny
last month as the focus of spirited (some would say divisive) Supreme Court
arguments on the constitutionality of student drug testing. Facing what
turned out to be a fairly hostile panel of justices, Graham Boyd of the
ACLU argued on behalf of Tecumseh student Lindsay Earls that random drug
testing of all students in extracurricular activities is a violation of a
student's Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and
seizure. Judging by comments made by the justices -- including several
sneering references by Justice Anthony Kennedy to "druggies" and "druggie
schools" -- the odds are good that they'll reject Boyd's arguments to rule
in favor of drug testing in school.

In anticipation of a ruling, perhaps in the next few weeks, many high
schools are preparing to launch programs similar to the ones in Rushville
and Tecumseh. Drug tests are an easy fix for school administrators who feel
that they must take a public stand on drugs, but have had little success
with drug education programs like DARE. They are banking on the theory that
the fear of getting caught with tainted urine will compel students not to
smoke pot or sniff coke.

But there is little evidence that drug testing programs -- which can be
extremely costly -- have had any measurable impact on substance abuse in
the schools that use them. So far, statistics reflect almost no change in
student drug use in testing schools. And it is quite possible that, as
students see drug testing more as a challenge than a deterrent, drug use
actually increases with testing.

Meanwhile, say critics of the programs, students are being raised with an
eroding idea of personal privacy, an adversarial relationship with
authorities and a skewed education on why they shouldn't do drugs -- or, at
least, why they shouldn't do certain drugs.

At Rushville, certainly, the kids say that they continue to smoke and sniff
and sip to their hearts' content. "Drug testing is costing a lot of
taxpayer money; but anything that's going on around here would be out of
your system by the time you're tested," says one anonymous Rushville
student. "I don't know anyone who is denied right now, but there are drugs
everywhere."

The United States Supreme Court first cleared the way for drug testing of
student athletes in 1995, in a case called Vernonia School District vs.
Acton. In the Vernonia case, an Oregon high school football team was known
to be rampantly using and dealing drugs, and authorities wanted to test
them. The Supreme Court decision ruled that testing was permissible in this
case because there was reasonable suspicion of drug use, and because
athletes who got naked in locker rooms had lowered expectations of privacy
as well as heightened requirements for safety on the field.

The court's decision didn't specify whether routine testing of all student
athletes everywhere was constitutional, but many schools interpreted the
ruling as permission to go ahead and test. In the years since the Vernonia
ruling, an increasing number of schools have snuck in additional testing
programs -- for teens who drive to school, sign up for extracurricular
activities, participate in the school band. Currently, the random drug
testing of athletes and students in extracurricular activities mainly takes
place in a dozen or so conservative, Bible Belt and Southern states --
including Texas, Wyoming, Idaho, Alabama, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Florida
and Indiana. (Wisconsin also has drug testing in its public schools).

As testing has grown in popularity, opposition to it has been expanding to
include conservative parents, as well as angry students and civil
libertarians. The testing doesn't just invade privacy and curtail civil
rights, say critics, it encourages student alcohol use, encourages
rebellion in adolescents ripe for battle, and discourages extracurricular
participation among the kids who need it most, while targeting the most
active students for scrutiny.

Legal challenges to the policy at the state and federal level have
multiplied along with the arguments against it. The Tecumseh case is the
first case to make it to the Supreme Court since Vernonia, but the state of
Indiana has been debating the topic nonstop since the mid-1990s.

Indiana is where the Bible Belt meets the fan belt: a conservative and
religious state with an economy dominated by the automotive industry.
Statistically speaking, Indiana does not have rampant teen drug problems:
For example, nationally, 37 percent of all high seniors smoked marijuana in
the year 2000, according to the Monitoring the Future survey, yet only 35.4
percent of all Indiana seniors did. The state has had a small epidemic of
methamphetamine use, and Ecstasy use is climbing -- as it is almost
everywhere in the nation -- but it's hardly off the charts.

For locals, however, any drug use is too much drug use. Accordingly, local
authorities have imposed a series of heavy-handed laws designed to keep
kids (and adults) out of trouble, from drug roadblocks to mandatory curfews
to the controversial drug testing programs.

Lawyer Ken Falk of the Indiana Civil Liberties Union (ICLU) has been
battling these laws all the way, with a few successes and a few failures.
On March 18, he lost his most recent crusade, a four-year-long lawsuit
against the Northwestern School Corporation on behalf of the Linke family
of Kokomo. In deciding for the school corporation, the Indiana Supreme
Court ruled that drug testing of students involved in extracurricular
activities was legal under Indiana state law.

I don't feel like it's a violation of my privacy," she says. "The things
they test for aren't legal for anyone to do. Don't do them and you won't
get in trouble."

Perhaps the Linkes and Falks of the world would be more understanding about
the drug testing programs if there was evidence that drug use was waning
because of them. But there isn't. "There's no proof the program works,"
says Noreen Linke. "With the drug issue, it's symbolism over substance: 'We
don't care if you produce four studies that prove this program is
ineffective, we have to do something and this is what we're going to do.'"

At Northwestern, superintendent Snoddy says that only a handful of tests
ever come back positive; most of these are for tobacco, he says, with a few
others testing positive for marijuana or prescription medicines like
Ritalin. He also confirms that recent surveys about student drug use have
shown no substantial change in intoxicant usage since drug testing began.

Still, Snoddy believes that testing sends a strong message to the kids: He
says that some kids have told the principal that the program "makes a
difference," and gives them a good excuse to deflect peer pressure. "Drug
testing is another crutch for students to say 'No, I don't want to
participate in that lifestyle; I don't want to run the risk of testing
positive,'" he explains. "It provides an avenue for increasing the risk
that mom and dad might find out, which leads to the opportunity for
communication between parent and child."

Principals and administrators rely heavily on this kind of theory when
talking about the success of their programs, perhaps because there have
nothing else to rely on. No major studies have managed to gauge the effect
of these programs on drug use (one pilot study in Oregon has claimed that
student athlete drug use is reduced 25 percent by random testing, but the
study is only partially complete).

Even at Rushville -- the only school in Indiana that continued testing
students while the Northwestern case was in the courts -- six years of drug
testing have had no quantifiable impact on student drug use. "The numbers
have gone nowhere, if the truth be known," says Fred Smith, who tracks the
program and student drug use surveys for the local Drug Free Schools
program. Instead, he believes that the program is successful because he
hears, word of mouth, that there are fewer parties. Of course, he says,
"here in Rush County, drug use wasn't rampant anyway" (a fact that causes
some to question why drug testing was implemented in the first place).

Talk to the students at these schools, however, and you'll hear anecdotes
explaining why there hasn't been a measurable change: Many kids are still
doing drugs, but have become very wily about not getting caught. As the
local teenage boys in Rushville report, kids at Rushville High have gotten
quite devious in their drug taking, what with the potions and mixes. For
example, the kids say that Rushville students are well aware that the drug
testing trailer pulls up every month, and they time their drug binges
accordingly: The day after the truck comes is apparently a popular time to
smoke dope. For weekend binges, the students pick drugs that won't linger
in their systems until Monday, such as abundant quantities of alcohol.

This is exactly what has happened at Northwestern, say students there.
"When they instituted drug testing at Northwestern, marijuana went out the
door. It became alcohol, because it gets out of your system faster," Reena
Linke reports. "People get wasted all the time, even during the week."

Under these circumstances, drug tests are little more than an expensive
means of finding out if students are smoking cigarettes or pot, but very
little else. Every other drug that kids might be experimenting with on the
weekends -- including the most dangerous drugs, like heroin, cocaine and
Ecstasy -- will be out of their systems by Monday.

Opponents of testing also point out that by testing only the students who
are in extracurricular activities or sports, the school fails to challenge
kids who are mostly likely to be experimenting with drugs. Students who
participate in wholesome extracurriculars like the Fellowship of Christian
Athletes or the Future Homemakers of America are the ones who are being
singled out for testing, even though drug use is often more common among
the kids who loiter in the parking lots, don't sign up for extracurricular
activities, don't go to prom and thus don't get tested.

"People who don't have anything to do are the ones who do the drugs; it's
not the ones out at sports," notes Northwestern senior Jason Kirton. In
fact, the fear of drug testing could easily deter troubled students from
joining the extracurricular activities -- yearbook, sports, band -- that
might direct them away from drugs and toward more rewarding pastimes.

Meanwhile, say students, drug testing makes a mockery of drug education.
Instead of putting money into programs that might teach kids long-term
lessons about the dangers of drugs, schools are relying on expensive drug
testing programs that merely teach students that they need to pass certain
tests at certain times.

As Kirton puts it, "Instead of giving them excuses not to do drugs, why
don't you give them reasons not to do drugs? What about all other things
kids are faced with? Are you going to give them a test they have to pass
for that, instead of a reason to say no?"

Even Ed Lyskowinski, the superintendent of Rush County Schools, a genial
man who wears an American flag pin and a bottle-brush haircut, agrees that
drug testing is not really teaching kids why they shouldn't do drugs. But
there's only so much schools can do, he says. "I'm not sure drug testing
will address the root reasons kids do drugs," he says. "We're addressing a
symptom. We're mirrors of society, and these are societal problems, and
schools are only one of many ways to address societal problems."

There are teens at Rushville, such as soccer-playing senior Jamie Winters,
who say that the testing has chilled the impulse to try drugs and given her
an excuse to deny peer pressure. "People say, 'Come on, it's no big deal,'"
she explains. "We say, 'Yeah it is. There's too much riding for us to do
that.' I think it cuts down drug use maybe 50 percent, people who cut down
because they are afraid their parents might find out."

But Winters and her friends -- clean-cut and academically responsible
cheerleaders and athletes -- are probably the kids who weren't going to be
running out to toke up every weekend anyway. A different group of boys from
the school, all of whom were eager to talk about how commonplace drug use
is, laughed when asked if the program had any impact on their drug use.

If anything, the programs seem to give defiant teens even more motivation
to thumb their noses at authority. Kirton, an ardently Mormon 19-year-old
with the boyish countenance of a model out of Abercrombie & Fitch, reports:
"If kids want to do drugs, they'll do it anyway. The only impact testing
has had is to make students mad and angry and competitive with the school,
to try to get away with things without them knowing. They make destructive
choices about drugs because they think this is a way to get back at the
school: 'They think they know me, but they don't!'"

Neither Rushville High School nor Northwestern High School feels like
prison. Both schools are modern and affluent and strikingly well-appointed,
with friendly and good-humored administrators who seem to get along well
with their fresh-faced student population. Those in charge don't seem to be
authoritarians out to repress civil liberties; instead, they appear to be
concerned adults who feel like they have to do everything they can to keep
kids healthy and alive and safe.

Says Lyskowinski, "We're not out to discriminate against kids or beat their
rights down, we just want them to do what they are supposed to do. We're
not trying to catch anyone, we just want to keep the problems out of school."

But minor encroachments on the civil liberties of teens, "for their own
good," can lead to more dangerous incursions on the civil liberties of all
Americans, say critics of testing. Schools around the country already are
imposing ever-more draconian (and humiliating) drug testing programs on
their students. In Maryland, 18 seniors were pulled from their final exams
in the spring of 2000 and drug tested on the stage of their high school
auditorium simply because of a student rumor that the kids had taken drugs
at a party. That same year, in Lockney, Texas, the local public high school
imposed random drug testing for all students; kids who failed or refused to
take the test were initially told that they would be suspended and forced
to pick up trash by the freeway in orange jumpsuits. And that's just the
public high schools; private religious high schools get away with far more
severe measures.

Widespread mandatory drug testing of all students, even if it is the wish
of many high school administrators, is unlikely to catch on too fast, even
if the Supreme Court opens the door to such programs. The reason: At
roughly $25 per test per student, a school that randomly tests only 25
students every few weeks will spend thousands of dollars over the course of
a semester. Public schools that need money for textbooks and teachers have
a hard time justifying that kind of expenditure on pee cups and debatable
effectiveness. In fact, Rushville already has had to cut back on its drug
testing because the bills were mounting.

Still, a ruling by the Supreme Court in favor of drug testing will
inevitably result in more such programs across the nation. ACLU drug policy
lawyer Graham Boyd predicts, "A Supreme Court decision that endorses drug
testing will plant the seeds of an idea among school boards that might not
otherwise consider it." In Indiana alone, in the month since the Linkes
lost their case before the state Supreme Court, drug testing companies like
Indiana Testing, Inc. report that business with high schools has doubled.

Ultimately, drug testing in high schools appears to have little to do with
fact, and everything to do with panic. Faced with the threat of drug use,
parents and administrators feel helpless. It is not hard to understand why
they grasp at the most obvious solution, if only to demonstrate that they
are doing something -- anything -- even if there's no proof that it works.

"If we can save even one life, it's worth it," said administrators at
Indiana's drug testing schools; but they sidestep discussions of what might
be lost in the process. Whatever they feel privately about threats to civil
liberties, the school leaders are prepared to publicly defend their
programs, regardless of cost or challenges about their efficacy. And they
may soon be supported by the highest court in the land.

"It's a pride issue," says Northwestern student Kirton, perceptively. "You
can never teach an angry person, and when you get to drug testing and these
controversial topics, people get angry and it's no longer about the topic,
it's about themselves. And when it's about themselves, they aren't ever
willing to admit they are wrong."

Note: If the Supreme Court rules in favor of drug testing in public
schools, will students come clean? Kids at schools in Indiana, where drug
tests rule, say no way. Lydia, Rosa and Reena Linke fought drug testing at
their schools near Kokomo, Ind.