TOUGHER DETECTION, PENALTIES WON'T STOP YOUTH DRUG USE

Part of the crusade against substance abuse has always been to remove drugs
from America's institutions of education, a noble pursuit for sure.
However, all manner of authority, from the DEA on down to local school
boards have consistently approached this problem from the wrong angles.
Developing more and more sophisticated methods of detecting drugs and
doling out harsher and harsher punishments to offenders just isn't working.
In the case of local schools, recent efforts using drug dogs and random
locker checks turned up negligible amounts of narcotics. By doing this,
school board members, principals and others look ''tough on drugs.'' The
reality, though, is that those efforts did nothing to protect our youth and
steer them away from drugs. Rather than toe the accepted line on youth drug
abuse, county and school officials need to try and think outside of the box
to find solutions to what admittedly is a terrible problem.

Lennon Haas