GOOD RIDDANCE TO DRUG TESTS

It looks as though something good may come of Oregon's school budget
problems after all. Money trouble has persuaded the Prospect School
District to do without drug tests for student athletes next year.

The district and its neighbor, Butte Falls, are the only two in the county
that force students to take the tests as a condition of participating in
school sports. Now Prospect says the tighter budget it expects next year
includes no room for the $1,500 drug-testing program.

It would be best for students if the district never found room for it again.

Put aside for a minute the far-reaching issues drug tests of student
athletes raise, including discrimination of a specific student group,
constitutional questions around illegal searches and whether it's
unreasonably embarrassing to urinate in a cup in a school bathroom while
others wait in line nearby.

The tests' most fundamental flaws may be the practical ones - that they
offer only false assurance that students are, in fact, drug free.
Prospect's tests screen for marijuana, opium, hallucinogens and
methamphetamines, but the district's biggest student drug problem is surely
alcohol. And kids say athletes who take drugs screened by the tests stop
using before the tests and start again after.

Parents of course want to protect their kids from drugs, but that's all but
impossible to accomplish with a policy of any sort. Less invasive and
fairer approaches such as drug-free pledges seem at least as effective as
urine testing - and a lot more respectful of kids.

Prospect school leaders ought to consider that as they decide how to deal
with the potential for drug use among student athletes long term. Even when
the budget picture looks better, we think they'll find urine tests never
were money well spent.