Posted on 02/25/2006 3:35:50 PM PST by MRMEAN
SAN DIEGO ---- Calling student drug use a "national public-health problem," the White House's deputy drug czar told educators Wednesday that random drug testing can be a potent and effective deterrent strategy.
Mary Ann Solberg, deputy director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, strongly endorsed student screening before a crowd of roughly 150 school and community leaders at a conference on drug testing held at San Diego's Hilton Hotel in Mission Valley.
Opponents of student drug testing also attended the conference to ask questions of the speakers and speak with reporters in the hallways.
"We see this as a very one-sided dog-and-pony show," said Kevin Keenan, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in San Diego.
Not only do drug-testing programs train children that the government can violate their bodily privacy, but they also keep money away from other prevention methods with more proven track records, Keenan said.
"We've evolved tremendously from 'Just say No,' " he said.
The regional conference, the second of four planned for 2006, came less than a week after the Vista Unified School District trustees approved random testing for high school students wishing to participate in extracurricular activities.
The Vista program is funded by a federal grant and could start by the end of the month.
Aside from the Oceanside Unified School District, which randomly tests its high school athletes, few North County school districts have pursued drug testing.
None of the 84,000 or so students in Southwest Riverside County is randomly drug-tested. Reached by phone and e-mail this week, officials with public school districts in Temecula, Murrieta, Lake Elsinore, Menifee and Perris said it's a program they do not employ.
"There are a lot of ramifications and invasion-of-privacy issues," said Danielle Clark, spokeswoman for the 25,000-student Temecula Valley Unified School District, of drug-testing students. "We basically tell the students what is acceptable and what isn't acceptable, and athletes are the unspoken definition of role models and we expect them to act that way."
Solberg told attendees that voluntary drug testing deters students from using illegal substances and helps identify those already using so they can get the help they need.
The tests should be confidential, she said, and positive results should not get students in legal hot water.
"This can never appear on a permanent record," she said in a press conference following her opening remarks. "This is not a criminal justice issue."
But in a hallway interview, Jennifer Kern, a research associate with the Drug Policy Alliance, said promises of a drug test's confidentiality should offer little comfort to those who take them. "Students are pulled out of class (for testing), then suddenly they're not on the basketball team," she said, when asked how results could become public knowledge.
About 51 percent of high school seniors reported taking an illicit drug in their lifetimes, according to the national Monitoring the Future survey in 2004. The survey was funded by the federal government's National Institute on Drug Abuse, and was conducted by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. The survey has been done annually since 1975.
Student drug testing is a key component of the White House's National Drug Control Strategy. Solberg's office held a conference last month in Orlando, Fla., and will travel to two more cities, Falls Church, Va., and Milwaukee, in 2006 to promote the plan.
Attendees at the all-day event in San Diego heard presentations ranging from legal issues, testing technology and how to develop a screening program.
Attorney William Judge said that in his opinion, random student drug-testing programs were not only legal but that they could also protect schools from lawsuits.
"The question will be, 'What did you do to reasonably protect my kid?' " he said.
Near the conclusion of her opening remarks, Solberg emphasized that drug-testing programs should not be imposed by superintendents or school boards, it should be a "community decision."
"It's something I'm interested in implementing," said attendee Chris Greene, athletic director at Carlsbad High School, during a break in the presentations. "I think it's positive for the kids."
He added, however, that the district is still in the information-gathering stage and "we can't rush to any judgments."
Maryann Solberg, Deputy Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, talks with media representatives before her presentation Wednesday morning at the Hilton Hotel in San Diego.
BILL WECHTER Staff Photographer
Staff writer Jennifer Kabbany contributed to this report. Contact staff writer Craig TenBroeck at (760) 631-6621 or ctenbroeck@nctimes.com.
VUSD board approves random drug tests
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/02/17/news/inland/vista/19_17_402_16_06.txt
By: STACY BRANDT - Staff Writer
VISTA ---- The school board voted unanimously Thursday night to implement random drug testing for all students in extracurricular activities at Vista's two comprehensive high schools.
The testing could begin this month, Vista Unified School District officials have said.
Rancho Buena Vista High School tried a pilot drug-testing project last year. Principal Rich Alderson said at Thursday's board meeting that the program worked as a deterrent to keep students away from drugs. Only two students tested positive for drugs last year out of about 40 tests a month, he said.
"The earlier you catch this the better," Trustee Jim Gibson said about drug use. "I'm glad that we're actually involved with doing something like this."
One parent complained about the amount of formal notice the school's have given. Parents didn't receive letters describing the new federally funded program until earlier this week.
Students will be tested for alcohol, marijuana, opiates, cocaine, methamphetamine, steroids and PCP, and would not be punished until at least their second positive test result, the letter states. Refusal to take the test will be considered a positive test for drugs.
Also at the meeting, trustees voted unanimously to approve boundary changes for the area around Maryland Elementary School, which is expected to open in September.
The campus is being built near the corner of Maryland Drive and North Avenue, about a block west of Melrose Drive in eastern Oceanside.
Most of the school's students are expected to come from Bobier, Grapevine and Olive elementary schools, which have about 800 students each.
This would bring the schools down to between 600 and 700 each. Maryland Elementary will have about 650 students. District staff have said their goal is to bring all of the schools down to 720 students or less.
Parents who want their students to remain in the school they now attend will be given a form to request to do so.
Letters informing parents of the boundary changes and application forms for students to remain at their current schools will probably be sent in early March, Ryan said.
In other business, trustees agreed to push for Rancho Minerva Middle School to open in January, right after winter break. This was already the tentative plan for the school, but district staffers said they wanted to make sure that parents remained informed of the school's progress.
The new campus, which is under construction in the eastern part of the district off San Clemente Drive, will at least temporarily absorb all the students who now attend Lincoln Middle School. Lincoln will be closed for several months for refurbishing and could open up again in fall 2007, though it's future remains somewhat uncertain.
"At this point, we're awaiting a board decision on the future of Lincoln," Associate Superintendent Pete McHugh said at the meeting. "The long-term vision of Lincoln has yet to be specifically nailed down."
Rancho Minerva will probably be finished in time to open next January, though the multipurpose room will not be finished, said Karl Bradley, district chief facilities officer. Students in the school's band and other extracurricular activities would be able to use relocatable classrooms until the building is completed, which would probably be next fall, he said.
"Long story short ---- it is feasible, due to the current construction schedule, to open the school in January," Bradley said.
Contact staff writer Stacy Brandt at (760) 631-6622 or sbrandt@nctimes.com
This will be fun. Good thing to consider, President Reagan was a very strong proponent of the War on Drugs.
The White House is driving itself and the conservative movement over a cliff.
I posted a speech he gave subsequent to that date, where he was not giving pot a pass in the WoD. It was on one of the legalization threads where they were trying to use Reagan's admiration of the LP to further their arguments.
Who would expose their children to these creeps?
Of course, if your kid objects, they'll get put on Ritalin.
Give the pee test to all government employees first!
What a massive waste of taxpayer money.
Every new law should have a trial period where congress is required to abide by it first for a year!
I was going to say: what are they going to do when every darn test pops positive for ritalin, adderall, etc -- the drugs the school system pushes on kids to make them more "manageable?"
Absolutely! As a reservist I have to pee in the bottle about every other month. Mox nix, unless they test for sour mash bourbon; in that case, I'm toast.
But get a load of that photo! Is that the wife of Cornelius, from "Return of planet of the Apes"?
a law to provide overweight drunk senior citizens with young hookers.
I think it was Bill "Spaceman" Lee, ex-pitcher for the red Sox, who said, when asked about drug testing: "heck ya, I'm in favor, I've tested a lot of drugs in my time"
...and the House, Senate, White House as well as State senate and house, and throw in local mayors and council members too.
There's just something un-American about a Total Surveillance state. I understand they are trying to address a real problem, but the long-term cost to the nation may be too great.
I've got a better idea. I think it's time to drug test politicians. All members of congress should be required to submit a urine sample before voting on any legislation. Alcohol and drug free should be just as important for our leaders as it is for students.
.
Particularly noteworthy is how much less government we have, thanks to Bush's policies. Since we have much less less government the numbers are running in the negative now.
With existing and ex-Presidents in the forefront, the globalists are assuming control.
What a dream! A global bureaucracy...!
I'm surprised this isn't being done already.
You must become accustomed to the nanny state so we will start you at a young age. May the ugly bitch from the White House drug office go to hell.
Yes, let's do go there. Throughout his Presidency Reagan aggresively pursued the WoD.
**There's just something un-American about a Total Surveillance state. I understand they are trying to address a real problem, but the long-term cost to the nation may be too great.**
It is like the Federal tax system. The nanny state - in the name of health care - just keeps growing and growing. We see those who hate smokers love it that the State is after smokers. We see the anti-druggers glad the state is after the pot heads. We see the anti-gunners tickled pink that the state is after gun owners. We see the skinny ones glad the state is turning against the fat ones...
Like the tax system, the special interests never end. There is always another group to buy off with power.
Yep. I think it's time conservatism reasserted its suspicion of big government.
It is not clear that the White House is pushing for only for drug testing of students involved in sports, I've looked at their website and I think they'd like to drug test all youth if they could do it.
Right now drug-test policies have been expanded beyond student athletes, and to kids involved in any extracurricular activity. So all those wild kids in band, chess club, cooking club, etc. get to be drug tested.
And don't students have a right to partipate in a student newspaper, magazine, Christian club, or conservative club--1st Amendment?
"Follow the money."
Maybe!? Ya think?
That's how events have progressed (read: regressed) to today. Creep. Instrumentalism. They used it to create a leviathan government. It's almost as though the parasitical elites -- purveyors of group-think -- are inching the establishment and us along with it ever closer to the edge of the cliff. We're so close our nose is sniffing at the edge. Like a dog sneaking up on the cliff edge.
All the time they've told us that we need this new law and that new regulation. At the clip of about 3,000 new laws each year. It's been incrementing like that for several decades -- more than a dozen. Telling us that without each year's new laws and regulations persons and society would run themselves and society headlong to destruction -- we'd plunge over the cliff edge. That's their excuse -- not reason -- for proposing thousands of new laws and regulations each year.
Ironically, for decade after decade for hundreds of years man and his society have increasingly prospered. And, as it is now, we continue to increase prosperity despite almost every person breaking several laws each year. A person would think that surely persons and society would have self destructed with so much lawlessness occurring. Yet just the opposite has happened. People have increased prosperity.
It is the establishment parasitical elites that are a drain on people and society while dragging us closer to the cliff edge. The cliff-edge that persons via increasing prosperity are distancing themselves from. For it is they -- parasitical elites -- that have created the cliff edge to drag us over. Free people do not move toward self-destruction.
Congress and high-ranking officials of the IRS have ensured that most people break the law. When not one in 40 accountants can arrive at the same income tax bill for the same family of four and, the IRS help-line answers are wrong 60% of the time, is that not a glaring sign that the intentionally blind are leading the manipulated blind -- people manipulated, usually emotionally via boogie-man "problems" and fears foisted on them -- over the cliff edge.
Unlike truth that has many gray areas, honesty has none.
A War of Two Worlds:
Value Producers
versus
Value Destroyers
"It is a war of rational honesties versus irrational dishonesties."
Bush has been pushing it, but schools are finding out it doesn't work -- it's smoke and mirrors by the companies that do the te$ting.
Today's WoD = Waste of Dollars.
I consider President Reagan to be a pinnicle of conservative leadership. Given that he never once, in his eight years of office, waiver in his stance on the issue I guess I'll continue to accept the course he plainly set on the issue.
Of course you will...
I can only think that he would be disappointed to see the LP he once admired consumed by this issue.
I doubt he would be proud to see the LP crusading for something he considered an enemy to the nation he loved and served.
Reagan had eight years of direct involvement available to him.
And exactly when did he endorse the random drug testing of grade and high school students?
Great link...Student Drug testing doesn't reduce drug use!
LOL! He signed a law mandating the death penalty for major drug pushers...and dedicated it to the woman he loved.
Emerging from these drug testing policies is a society bent on sacrificing some of its most important principles of liberty in favor of the authoritarian canard of a safe and secure society. Lovers of liberty should be concerned that such policies are likely to change how people (i.e., the generation of youth subjected to the testing policies) generally perceive liberty, and how they perceive the power and role of the state. Forcing a generation of children to submit to the drug screening regimen makes it likely that as adults, this cohort will fail to see the limited role government is supposed to take in a free society. Consequently, this drug-tested generation is likely to become even more tolerant of other government intrusions into life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, and more tolerant of those who clamor for greater authoritarian control over society.</p>
And to you that sounds like random drug testing of students?
He had officers in the United States military, people he trusted and loved, peeing in bottles.
Since the 2000 survey, two significant developments have occurred. In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court approved expansion of random drug testing beyond athletes to all extra curricular activities. The second came in 2003, when the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan released the most comprehensive study to date of the relationship between student drug use and testing. After tracking tens of thousands of eighth-, 10th- and 12th-grade students in hundreds of schools nationwide for three years, researchers found that school drug testing "was not associated with either the prevalence or the frequency" of illicit drug use.
The study called for more inquiry into such things as cost-effectiveness, false positives and alienation of students.
If a student is using a prohibited substance and knows if he participates in an extracurricular activity, he just might not participate, and studies have shown that students who participate in extracurricular activities are less likely to do drugs, less likely to get involved in crime, and more likely to stay in school and graduate.
And was consistently a strong warrior in the WoD.
If YOU think you're kidding -- you're NOT. There are already schools that are forming "Fat Police" (my term) to 'address' the overweight kid....watch for it soon at a school near you.
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