DRUG TESTS AREN'T HEALTHY

Charlie Hammond's excellent column ("Testing high school students for drugs
is a bad idea," Lodinews.com, April 9) argued against student drug testing
on privacy grounds, but there are compelling health reasons to oppose drug
testing.

Student involvement in extracurricular activities has been shown to reduce
drug use. They keep kids busy during the hours they are most prone to
getting into trouble. Forcing students to undergo degrading drug tests as a
prerequisite will only discourage such activities.

Drug testing may also compel smokers of relatively harmless marijuana to
switch to harder drugs to avoid testing positive. Despite a short- lived
high, marijuana is the only drug that stays in the human body long enough
to make urinalysis a deterrent. Marijuana's organic metabolites are
fat-soluble and can linger for weeks.

Synthetic drugs are water-soluble and exit the body quickly. A student who
takes ecstasy, cocaine, heroin or meth on Friday night will likely test
clean on Monday morning.

If you think students don't know this, think again. Anyone capable of
running a search on the Internet can find out how to thwart a drug test.

The most commonly abused drug is almost impossible to detect with
urinalysis. That drug is alcohol, and it takes far more lives every year
than all illegal drugs combined.

Instead of wasting money on counterproductive drug tests, schools should
invest in reality-based drug education.

Robert Sharpe

Program Officer,
Drug Policy Alliance,
Washington, D.C.