article16

{article 16}

Trial by vial. (mandatory drug testing in schools is
flawed) Dana Hawkins.

U.S. News & World Report, May 31, 1999 v126 i21 p70

It's Monday morning and time for another routine drug test at Olentangy Middle School. The specimen collector sweetly prods her two dozen unwilling subjects. "Are you next, dear?" She hands a clear plastic cup to a thin blond boy, barely 4 feet tall. Head down, he mumbles, "Thanks," and slouches grimly toward the bathroom. Within minutes he returns, grimacing and daintily holding his specimen, pinky extended. The collector's ungloved hand quickly grabs the cup and tilts it over a narrow vial. A few stray drops soil the paper towel, and the acrid odor of fresh urine tinges the air.

Scenes like this one in suburban Lewis Center, Ohio, are being played out at schools across the country as more and more districts are requiring random drug testing. And it's not just athletes who are lining up, as at Olentangy, but students in all after-school activities. Although precise numbers are not available, an in-formal survey by U.S. News found that just since last fall, several hundred schools have begun testing students or are considering it. Nearly a dozen drug testing bills have been introduced in state legislatures and in Congress, and all signs point to more and broader drug testing to come.

Prerequisite for the prom. The groundswell began last October, when the U.S. Supreme Court let stand an Indiana decision holding that it was legal to extend drug testing for student athletes to other pupils who enjoy special privileges. As a result, schools are requiring that teens produce urine samples to join not just the track team but also the marching band and the chess club. In Cave City, Ark., teens must sign up for random testing if they want to go on field trips or to attend the prom. And in several schools in Indiana, students must submit to urinalysis if they want to drive to school. A few private schools, such as Pope John Paul II High School in Slidell, La., even plan to test their entire student bodies starting next fall.

Proponents of student drug testing acknowledge its potential constitutional flaws, but they say it is justified given the extent and stubbornness of adolescent substance abuse. Although drug use is down slightly after six years of steady increase, some 41 percent of high school seniors used illicit drugs last year, according to the University of Michigan's respected Monitoring the Future study. Testing, proponents say, can relieve students of peer pressure by giving them an excuse to say no. "If we can save just one kid from being maimed or killed by drugs," says Olentangy High School Principal Bob Thompson, "it's worth the infringement on their rights."

But a review of numerous school policies and court cases shows that worries about drug testing go beyond potential breaches of the Fourth Amendment protection against unlawful search and seizure. Opponents say the tests are also costly, ineffective, and prone to abuse. Says Joseph Califano, president of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University: "We are not going to random-test our way out of the problem of kids using drugs in America. God help us if we come to that."

In many schools, we already have. The Olentangy district is an example of how a model program works. Ten percent of student athletes are called at random from class each week. If their samples are positive in a preliminary screening, the lab performs a more extensive test, which provides a molecular "footprint" of a drug with nearly 100 percent accuracy. If these results are also positive, and if testers rule out the presence of substances that could skew them, the principal and parents are notified. The students must then undergo counseling and testing for five weeks. A second offense brings suspension from sports teams for the rest of the year, and a third, a permanent ban on participating in sports.

Students at Olentangy are surprisingly blase about drug testing, which produced only three positive results out of 1,400 middle and high school students tested this academic year. The tests, which are performed by a federally certified lab for $ 25 each, are more accurate than those used at many other schools. Less expensive urine tests, in which results are analyzed on the spot, are wrong 5 percent to 60 percent of the time. And hair tests, while more comprehensive and convenient for the more than 80 schools that use them, have been rejected for use by the federal government because they may be discriminatory. Some studies show that drug traces remain in black hair up to 50 times longer than in blond hair.

Travis Robinett, now 19, of Sunnyside, Utah, says he knows how unreliable a drug test can be. An honor roll student, regional debate champion, and star athlete while in high school, Robinett says he was shocked after a urine test in 1996 came up positive for THC, a substance found in marijuana. His mother, who believed Travis when he insisted he hadn't used drugs, immediately had him retested at two clinics. Both tests were negative. Nevertheless, Travis was kicked off the baseball team and lost hope for a college athletic scholarship.

Beating the tests. Inaccurate test results can swing the other way as well. The tests are easy for students to beat. In addition to feigning a "bashful bladder," teens add salt, Visine, bleach, or vinegar to their samples, or they drink quarts of water to try to dilute them. Students have been known to leave behind cups of their clean urine in the bathroom stall for drug-using friends. Or they purchase prescreened urine from an online purveyor known as Privacy Protection Services. The urine, produced by company President Kenneth Curtis himself, comes in a bag that can be concealed under clothing and conveniently heated to body temperature. Curtis calls the kits "an appropriate response to an inappropriate system."

Students who are worried about positive test results also can buy items designed to detoxify their systems or to mask drug use. At the Waterbeds 'n Stuff emporium in Franklin County, Ohio, a display counter is stocked with nitrate crystals to veil THC and flavored carbohydrate drinks that are said to flush out the urinary tract within an hour. The store also carries an entire line of "Urine Luck" products sold by Tommy Chong, formerly of Cheech and Chong, the famously drugged-out comedy duo.

Well aware of these tricks, some schools test urine for common adulterants. And at least one school resorted to strip searches to make sure that students were not carrying products to distort test results. Amity Valdez, 18, of Price, Utah, says she was traumatized in 1996 when the female principal of East Carbon High School forced her to strip to her underwear during a random test. Amity says she was ordered to lift up her hair and twirl around as the principal examined her. "I felt like I was on display," she says. "It was devastating." The school, which is the target of a lawsuit and no longer performs the searches, says that it was following the testing kit's instructions.

Complaints of invasion of privacy also extend to questions about prescription drug use. Testers ask students about prescriptions and other substances because they can trigger false positives. Tonic water, for example, can show up as cocaine, and Nyquil as an opiate or amphetamine. But some students do not want it known, for instance, that they take Prozac, Ritalin, or AIDS medication. Amanda Hicks, a 16-year-old from Lewisville, N.C., objected to her school's testing procedure and the requirement to list all prescriptions in advance. But she submitted anyway, her mother explains, because she felt the need to join activities to get into a good college. "They tell me extracurriculars are almost as essential as high SAT scores," said Anne-Marie Hicks. "So we signed up grudgingly."

Beer bashes. Aside from abuses and questions of constitutionality, critics charge that the biggest problem with drug testing is that schools are targeting the wrong kids and testing for the wrong substances. The students most likely to use drugs are not necessarily the kids who participate in after-school activities. And some of the most popular teen drugs--nicotine, LSD, steroids, and, especially, alcohol--typically are not targeted because the tests are too expensive and hard to administer. Partly because of this loophole, alcohol is the drug of choice at many schools that test. "Everything is so much more centered around alcohol now. It used to be centered around pot," says senior Priya Gandhi, homecoming queen at Olentangy High School. "The parties are just as wild, but now they don't have to pay the consequences."

Incentive-based drug testing programs, which award movie tickets, special privileges, and even cash to students who agree to urinalysis, are on the rise. In Lake Worth, Texas, volunteers receive "Pro Cards," good for discounts at the local pizza parlor. High school seniors also get a school-funded backpacking trip to New Mexico, and fifth graders are excused from some homework. Proponents of such programs say that if the incentives are strong enough, they can keep kids from using drugs. But critics doubt their effectiveness, saying that problem drug users are unlikely to volunteer for testing, no matter what the prize.

Coca-Cola contract. The high cost of drug testing, typically $ 70,000 a year for weekly random tests of 75 students, means that the service is available only to schools that can afford it. The federal government provides money from its Safe and Drug-Free Schools program, but it amounts to only a few dollars per student. Private corporations are helping--with a catch. Roche Diagnostic Systems, the leader in workplace drug testing, contributed $ 100,000 in testing to schools this year, hoping to build future demand. (The company is contacting 10,000 school administrators this summer.) And at tiny Adena High School in rural Frankfort, Ohio, the local Coca-Cola bottling company sponsors drug testing in exchange for a 10-year contract as the school's exclusive vendor of soft drinks.

Several individual students, with the help of civil rights groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the International Student Activism Alliance, are fighting random drug testing in the courts and through private mediation. But constitutional scholars say that the current balance between school safety and student rights is tipped against them. "Because of a strong national policy against drug use by minors," says Norman Dorsen, a professor at New York University's School of Law, "there's a good chance the Supreme Court will uphold random testing of children in after-school activities."

Back at Olentangy, the coordinator of the district's program, Joseph Franz, apologizes for the immodest testing conditions. But not to worry, he says. Judging from the success of his company, Sport Safe Testing Service, Franz forecasts that new schools will be constructed with special drug testing facilities built right in.

GRAPHIC: Picture, Strip-searched. Amity Valdez of Price, Utah, says she was traumatized by a random drug test. (Photography by Scott Goldsmith for USN&WR); Picture, Zero tolerance. Drug tests at Olentangy High School, conducted weekly, have produced only three positive results this academic year. (Photography by Scott Goldsmith for USN&WR); Picture, Questionable results. Travis Robinett says he was wrongfully kicked off the baseball team. (Photography by Scott Goldsmith for USN&WR)