NO SILVER BULLET

Marsha Rosenbaum, of the Drug Policy Alliance has an excellent essay posted at Alternet on Bush's plan to leave no pee behind. This 23 million dollar boondoggle is being dangled in front of school districts as an incentive to institute random drug testing. Bush credited a reported decrease in teenage drug use to this program. He's lying of course and the study itself does not support his statement. It's a dangerous deceit.

...Thoughtful investigations instead reveal that random drug testing does not deter drug use, and that it alienates students.

Last year's large federally funded survey that showed declines in illegal drug use also compared schools with and without drug testing. It turned out there was no difference in illegal drug use among students in drug testing v. non-drug testing schools.[emphasis added] Aside from imparting misinformation about the deterrent value of testing, since only 5 percent of American schools currently utilize drug testing, Bush's crediting these programs for reductions in use is putting the cart before the horse.

And that's not the only counter-productive aspect.

Testing can have the unanticipated effect of keeping students from participating in after-school, extracurricular programs – the very same activities that would fill their time during the peak teenage drug-using hours of 3-6 PM. A Tulia, Texas student summed it up when she said, "I know lots of kids who don't want to get into sports ... because they don't want to get drug tested. That's one of the reasons I'm not into any [activity]. I'm on medication, so I would always test positive, and then they would have to ask me about my medication, and I would be embarrassed. And what if I'm on my period? I would be too embarrassed."

The tests are humiliating, and a waste of resources in cash strapped schools.

School administrators in Dublin, Ohio, for example, calculated that their $35,000 per year drug testing program was not cost-efficient. Of 1,473 students tested, at $24 each, 11 tested positive, for a total cost of $3,200 per "positive" student. They cancelled the program, and with the savings were able to hire a full-time counselor and provide prevention programs for all 3,581 students.

Rosenbaum goes on to make the point that teenagers need to be taught to make responsible decisions in order to succeed in the adult world and they must also feel trusted to feel safe. We agree. It's time to put the teaching back into education and limit the testing to the student's knowledge. Let's leave their bodily fluids out of it.