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| Just Say No To Drug Tests |
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Posted by FoM on March 27, 2002 at 19:46:15 PT By Cindy Richards Source: Chicago Sun-Times 
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. Source: Chicago Sun-Times (IL) Related Articles: Drug-Test Case Pitting Ideology Against Law Student Privacy vs. Safety Random Indignities - Drug Testing for Everybody Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help |
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Comment #4 posted by Ethan Russo MD on March 28, 2002 at 14:23:16 PT:
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| Check it out: http://www.mapinc.org/newscc/v02/n591/a06.html?397 [ Post Comment ] |
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Comment #3 posted by Ethan Russo MD on March 28, 2002 at 07:06:52 PT:
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| Schoolboy busted on trace evidence according to the dog: http://www.canada.com/ottawa/story.asp?id={34BE25FA-E628-4547-BDAC-4EF108EBBAC4} [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #2 posted by Lehder on March 28, 2002 at 03:28:58 PT |
| The notion conceived
by Mielke and the
evil minds of other
East German rulers
was that an entire
population could be
brainwashed into
believing that their
lives were strictly
controlled by the
wise fathers of the
nation. His subjects
either agreed to - or
were forced to -
become informers.
They spied on their
neighbors, friends,
and relatives, and
sent written reports
to the million-strong
professional Stasi
agents who were
employed full time.
That was double the
number of Gestapo
agents used by Hitler
at his peak for a
population four times
greater. Virtually every East German had a file containing personal details of his or her life, noting what they did, where they worked, as well as character assessments on everything they thought or did, and what their habits were. When the rulers of East Germany were finally toppled, it was discovered that there was a horrendous number of such secret files stashed away at Stasi headquarters. "If you stood the millions of files upright in one line they would stretch for 202 kilometers. In these files can be found an unbelievable number of Stasi victims and their tormentors." . . . As one person put it: "We were all privates in the Stasi army. We were robots, believing every word told to us. We were automatons, trained never to think for ourselves . . . http://prorev.com/nationofspies.htm [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #1 posted by Lehder on March 28, 2002 at 02:49:07 PT |
| The author describes passage through the metal detector, the X-ray, the patting down and the urine test, but omits body inspection by the strip search camera. Six such cameras have been installed at the Orlando airport so that travelers can feel safe and secure, and, kids, they're headed to your school next. Here's a picture of somebody's big ass and more as viewed by officials through the strip search camera: [ Post Comment ] |
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