No Drug Testing

The Gadsden Times ran my letter on student drug testing today.

No Drug Testing

In response to "Policy is for Prevention" (Feb. 24, 2008) I submit the following in hopes of providing parents and educators with good, scientific-based reasons to "Just say no to student drug testing."

Oregon Health and Science University researchers just concluded a two-year study called SATURN (Student Athlete Testing Using Random Notification).

This is the first-ever prospective, randomized clinical trial to measure the deterrent effects of drug and alcohol testing among high school athletes. They report random drug and alcohol testing does not reliably keep student-athletes from using. They also found drug testing increases some risk factors for future substance use. These findings are published in the November issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health, the journal of the Society for Adolescent Medicine.

Student drug testing places kids in greater danger for a variety of reasons. Marijuana is the substance most commonly used by youth and is the safest of all substances, both licit and illicit. Students who might engage in a little youthful indiscretion by smoking pot once in a while, might move to harder drugs like meth and prescription narcotics because they are out of your system in 72 hours, whereas the broken down metabolites of marijuana, while causing no harm, are detectable in the human body for up to 45 days. Kids are also known to do crazy things like drink bleach in hopes of masking drugs in their system. That is extremely dangerous.

Parents and educators should also be aware that the following organizations oppose randomly drug testing students: National Education Association, the Association for Addiction Professionals, the American Public Health Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Association of Social Workers, and the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence.

If that many professionals say no to student drug testing, studies show it doesn't work and might even place kids in greater danger then why do we continue to see schools push for these invasive and dehumanizing programs for our kids?

Loretta Nall

Alexander City



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Editorial on Student Drug Testing

My friend Don spotted this before I did this morning in today's Huntsville Times. Kudos to David Prather for penning this gem.
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Just say 'no'

Yet another school system may succumb to the unnecessary expense and faulty logic of treating its students as criminals. That, in essence, is what will occur if the Madison City Board of Education approves a recommendation for random drug-testing of students who drive to school or participate in extracurricular activities in middle or high school.

Children who have done nothing to merit suspicion will be subjected to the humiliation of random testing. Urinalysis is the preferred option of the moment, although it's not 100 percent accurate and wouldn't catch some steroids that, say, football players might be tempted to use. So maybe the next step will be to kick it up a notch. Polygraphs? Waterboarding?

Remember that these aren't students who have given their teachers or parents reasons to suspect they are doing drugs. If that were the case, either or both could - and should - intervene. No, these are students whot are being picked at random and subjected to a process more properly required for certain jobs or for criminals and can be used by private businesses that choose to undertake the expense.

Is the Madison system rolling in money? Apparently not, based on recent efforts to get a half-cent tax increase. (To be fair, that money would go to capital needs. Still, money is a continuing problem for all three systems in this county.)
School officials say that the random testing will assist efforts to reduce teen drug use. There are better, less expensive ways to do that - focusing on children with obvious problems, for example - and those ways also don't make students guilty until proven innocent.

Madison City Schools would be wise to reject this proposal and turn its attention to more worthwhile pursuits. - David Prather
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Waterboarding? Ahahahahahahahahaha.

As to Mr. Prather's questions about the money to implement this program...it should be known that the ONDCP (Office of National Drug Control Policy) Gives grants to schools to implement these programs.