Drug testing flawed

I am very distressed about the movement to introduce random, suspicionless drug testing in Whitefish. I was at the meeting April 7, and did not speak as I had to leave early. I feel I need to voice this opinion as many other parents feel as I do.

First I would like to point to a recent case in Washington state that trumped the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that you quoted: In a March 13 ruling (York v. Wahkiakum), the Washington state Supreme Court rejected the random, suspicionless drug-testing of high school students.

In so doing, the court threw out a Wahkiakum School District policy in effect since 1999 that forced would-be student athletes to participate in drug tests if they wished to participate in school sports.

The state constitution offers protections to students that federal courts have failed to find in the Fourth Amendment, the court held.

Drug tests are a so-called easy fix for school administrators who must take a public stand on drugs but have had little success with other programs. The theory is that the fear of getting caught with tainted urine will force students not to do drugs. But there is very little evidence that drug-testing programs have had any quantifiable impact on substance abuse in the schools that use them.

Actually, statistics reflect almost no change. And it is quite possible that, as students see drug testing more as a challenge than a deterrent, drug use actually increases with testing.

Ultimately then, we will raise our children with an eroding idea of personal privacy, an adversarial relationship with authorities and a confusion as to why they shouldn't do drugs — or at least, why they shouldn't do certain drugs rather than teaching and trusting them to make good choices for their future.

Random tests of any kind violate our Fourth Amendment rights. It is a violation of privacy without just or reasonable cause.

At Rushville Consolidated High School in Indiana, they have employed random drug-testing for the past six years for between 75 to 90 percent of its 900 or so students, including anyone who participates in extracurricular activities or plays sports.

According to Janelle Brown on salon.com, "The kids say that they continue to smoke and sniff and sip to their hearts' content. 'Drug testing is costing a lot of taxpayer money; but anything that's going on around here would be out of your system by the time you're tested,' says one anonymous Rushville student. 'I don't know anyone who is denied right now, but there are drugs everywhere.'"

Brown also illustrates some strategies to "cheat" the tests that students employ.

Another study by Robert Taylor, professor at San Diego State, in The Cato Journal. Taylor states, "Few people would question the desirability of minimizing the use of drugs among minors. The use of random, suspicionless drug-testing of school athletes as a means to achieve this end is more open to question, however.

"Not only does this policy invade the privacy of a group of students who are relatively unlikely to use drugs, but it also discourages athletic participation and may actually lead to an increase in overall drug use. Even in those cases where the adoption of such testing leads to a reduction in overall drug use, compensating behavior by student athletes guarantees that the reduction in use will be smaller, perhaps much smaller, than expected.

"Until now, I have assumed that the sole objective of school administrators is to minimize drug use. However, school administrators may have preferences regarding not only the level of overall use, but also its distribution. The policy of drug testing high school athletes unambiguously increases the variance of drug use in the student population — use falls among the (inframarginal) athletes who continue to participate in sports but increases among the (marginal) athletes who 'quit the team' and revert to the higher use levels of their nonathlete peers.

"Holding overall use fixed, redistributing drug use from low-level users to high-level users may be considered undesirable, especially if the negative health effects are very small for low-level use but extremely large for high-level use. If so, then the policy of drug testing student athletes looks even less attractive that it did before."

I urge you to look at all sides of this issue. It seems you are rushing into a decision without adequate input and research of all the information.

As for myself, I want to raise my children in a loving, trusting home where they gain (or lose) trust based on their actions and choices. I think of it as starting with a clean slate and as they grow, they earn our trust and their freedom by making good choices.

To start by saying we don't trust them and that they have to prove us wrong is not effective or empowering. Drug testing the kids and making them "guilty until proven innocent" doesn't earn their respect.

It is an attempt to force respect and only causes a negative image of authority and of the school system. It is against every gut feeling I have as a mother, and I cannot allow it to happen for my children. It is quite simply wrong.

Miriam Lewis is a resident of Whitefish.