RANDOM DRUG TESTING: THE TRUSTED SECRETS

We suppose we shouldn't be surprised that the Bush administration
would like to institute random drug testing in high schools. It
already listens in on our conversations and asks our banks and
businesses for our private records while doing all that it can to
conceal its own e-mails and guest list from us. And now, it wants the
right to draw bodily fluids from teens, at random.

Of course we trust the government when it says that the results would
be kept confidential, and that a positive test wouldn't result in
punitive measures. Indeed, why stop there? Why not institute random
neighborhood drug tests?

Because it would be terrifying and wrong. Testing someone for drugs is
an invasive thing, and with few exceptions (a person who is involved
in some other trouble or has signed on to be tested as a condition of
employment) no one should be subjected to random drug tests, least of
all teens.

Parents and legal guardians, not the feds, ought to be the ones who
decide if their children ought to submit to such intrusions, period.