WHO SHOULD TEST?

OUR VIEW: No matter how the U.S. Supreme Court rules, no student taking
part in extracurricular activities should be drug tested without parental
permission.

The U.S. Supreme Court is considering a case that could allow schools to
drug test their students before they can take part in extracurricular
activities. Already, the court allows student-athletes to be drug tested.

Jim Lindley, a substance abuse counselor at Danville Regional Medical
Center, recently told this newspaper, "These kids tell me a lot of things
they don't tell their parents, and (what they say) scares me. They tell me
that they can get drugs easier than they can get alcohol."

That should scare everyone who cares about young people.

At the moment a person comes in contact with an illegal drug (or in the
case of alcohol and cigarettes, illegal for their age group), he or she is
breaking the law. Unlike cigarettes and tobacco, illegal drugs don't come
with warning labels, government oversight, quality control or anything else
found in other "consumer" products for sale.

And drug sellers don't card" their customers, so it is easier for teens to
buy illegal drugs than alcohol and cigarettes.

We have little hard evidence to gauge the real size of this community's
illegal drug problem.

We can count the number of arrests, overdoses and people in treatment, but
that paints an incomplete picture. We can look to polls, but are most drug
users going to tell a pollster they're breaking the law? And we can even
watch out for changes in a young person's behavior, grades and friends -
telltale signs of change but still no guarantee that they're using illegal
drugs.

While we don't know how the court will rule on this case, we think the
larger issue - drug testing at school - raises a vital question for society
about the role of parents.

No matter how the U.S. Supreme Court rules, no student taking part in
extracurricular activities should be drug tested without parental permission.

The government nanny is no substitute for parents doing their jobs - and
that means talking, warning, counseling, questioning, threatening and even
restricting their children.

With so much being said these days about the importance of parents helping
their children grow into useful, productive law-abiding citizens, it would
be wrong to take parents out of the loop on anything that affects their
children - including drug testing.