JUST SAY NO TO DRUG TESTS

The sun is just rising as weary students file into school. Classes won't
start for another hour, but it takes time to process the students each morning.

First, they must pass through the metal detectors that will X-ray them for
weapons. Next, they are patted down in a search for illegal contraband.

Finally, they shuffle into the bathroom where they deliver the daily urine
sample to ensure they have not smoked, drank or inhaled any illegal
substances since yesterday's processing.

OK, so maybe my version of the future goes a bit further than the drug
testing program that Oklahoma school officials are asking the Supreme Court
to uphold. But, extrapolating from hints provided by the conservative
justices and Bush administration lawyers during oral arguments last week,
it is easy to envision a world where all teenagers are guilty until proven
innocent.

The case currently before the court centers on a rural Oklahoma school
district that wants to drug test all students before allowing them to join
in any after-school activities.

Legally, the case asks whether this program violates the Fourth Amendment's
prohibition on unreasonable searches. But socially, we ought to be asking
whether we want a world that assumes our kids are using drugs, whether we
want to set up barriers to extracurricular activities and whether drug
testing is simply a crutch for school administrators and parents who don't
want to be responsible for detecting drug use in a child and responding
appropriately.

Jocks have been subjected to the indignities of drug testing since a 1995
Supreme Court ruling said schools could require drug tests of any athlete
wannabes, not just those suspected of using drugs to make them jump higher
and run faster.

If the court sanctions the Oklahoma program, the same rule would apply to
any student who wants to do anything more than show up at school and sleep
through algebra. Have a desire to write for the school paper? Join the
chess club? Try out for cheerleader? Here's the cup.

The great irony here is that all of those kids--the news writing,
chess-playing, cheereading types--are the ones least likely to be involved
in drugs.

I once asked the mother of a couple of wonderful teenage boys--one regaled
us with his trumpet, the other was still basking in the glow of having
saved a boy from drowning that afternoon at the community pool--how she had
raised such terrific kids.

"Keep 'em busy," she said. "Then they don't have time for the bad stuff."

Are there trumpet-playing, life-guarding kids who use drugs? Sure. But is
asking every kid who wants to play an instrument to pee in a cup the way to
stop that? Or does it merely keep the drug-using kids from finding a more
creative use of their time?

Indeed, the Oklahoma school district drug tested more than 500 kids over
two years. Four or five tested positive. Not exactly a big return on
taxpayer dollars.

Despite that, lawyers for the Bush administration told the justices that
they would like to see more drug testing, not less.

The Bush administration believes it is perfectly constitutional to test all
students all the time. But, they said, a program that focuses only on kids
who want to join some extracurricular program is easier to defend because
students who sign up for after-school programs implicitly agree to be tested.

"These are avoidable programs," Paul D. Clement, a deputy solicitor
general, told the justices.

The court's ruling is expected by summer. So students who enter middle
school and high school in the fall with the dream of starring in the school
play or becoming captain of the debate team could find themselves making a
stop in the bathroom first.

Or maybe they will simply look for something else to do--something that has
no barrier to entry. Smoking a joint, perhaps.