The administration has budgeted $25 million in the FY 2006 budget for grants to "support schools in the design and implementation of programs to randomly screen selected students and to intervene with assessment, referral, and intervention for students whose test results indicate they have used illicit drugs."
In other words, Büsh has just handed DFAF $25 million with which to do a little more coercive recruiting.
I've hung out w/ the SSDP and DPA people before. They're good ppl and good company; a lot less morose than what usually transpires around here. And they're doing our work for us. Anybody who's wondering what to do this summer for a little fun, diversion and civic health might consider checking out these organizations event calendars.
Feature: ONDCP Student Drug Testing Road Show Dogged by "Truth Squads" 5/13/05
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/386/roadshow.shtml
A four-city road show organized by the Drug Policy Alliance and 2002 Supreme Court decision okaying suspicionless drug testing of students involved in extracurricular activities. The Supreme Court had already approved the testing of student athletes in 1995.
"Out of that litigation, we decided our strategy would be to craft a campaign to give parents and educators the tools to challenge drug testing in their areas," said Kern. "We've been working very closely with SSDP," Kern said, "and the ACLU Drug Policy Litigation Project, and NORML is very involved in the drug testing issue, too. We are just a few small voices in opposition to drug testing, but because of our presence at the ONDCP summits, they are aware of us and they feel like they have to address our points. We are making them pause."
DPA laid the groundwork for participants in the four cities, Kern said. "We sent out action alerts encouraging our members to go to the summits, we provided an online tool kit, we had fact sheets, fliers, and suggested questions all ready," said Kern. "And we created a web site ? http://www.drugtestingfails.org -- where people can access more material."
The first stop on the summit tour was Dallas. Led by ONDCP deputy director Mary Anne Solberg and Drug Free Schools Coalition director David Evans, the panelists told assembled educators and interested citizens that drug testing was a proven means for reducing teen drug use. But while Solberg and her fellow panelists touted science, their spiels were designed to appeal to the emotions. Solberg, for example, regaled the audience with the tale of the high school cheerleader who took one toke from a joint and ended up as a heroin addict seven months later.
Suzy Wills of the Marsha Rosenbaum facing off against drug czar John Walters in a battle of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette op-ed pieces. And waiting for the summiteers in the audience were SSDP communications and legislative directors Tom Angell and Ross Wilson.
"Our objective was to prevent the ONDCP from being able to present itself as all-knowing and authoritative on the topic of student drug testing in front of an audience of open-minded educators and school officials who are rightly concerned with preventing substance abuse among their students," said Angell. "Since summit attendees were truly concerned with keeping their students safe, our primary argument against drug testing was that it simply does not work."
Angell and Wilson came prepared with materials debunking claims of drug testing's efficacy, including the results of the largest study ever conducted on the topic. Done by researchers at Parents Ending Prohibition, who attended along with three members of http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/opb/n ... _ID=771181
Feds Offer Grants for Surprise Student Drug Tests
By Kristian Foden-Vencil
PORTLAND, OR 2005-05-11 - The Bush Administration sent one of its deputy drug-tsars to a Portland summit Wednesday to talk about random drug testing in schools. The feds say they're not pushing surprise tests, but they will offer $25 million worth of grants to schools that take up the idea.
In 1998, the rural school district of Tecumseh, Oklahoma, adopted a new policy. It required all middle and high school students to consent to a drug test if they wanted to participate in extracurricular activities. Those activities included everything from football to the Future Homemakers of America club.
The parents of Lindsay Earls, who was in the choir, the marching band and the National Honor Society, filed suit saying it was an invasion of privacy. Four years later the US Supreme Court ruled--by the narrowest of margins-- that such testing is legal, as long as the students are in extra-curricular activities.
Mary Ann Solberg, the deputy
director of the White House's Office of Drug Policy, says since then dozens of school districts have instituted similar pop-drug-tests and they work:
Mary Ann Solberg: We're finding that they're seeing higher graduation rates, higher participation in extra-curricula activities, lower rates of violence.
Solberg says many school districts don't realize that the meaning of an extra-curricular activity can be widely defined; for example, it's been stretched to include all kids that drive to school. She also says that while urinalysis tests cost between $18 and $80, only 10% of a student body needs to be tested:
Mary Ann Solberg: So it's a very low cost program. But yet it's a program that deters, because you never know if your number is going to come up.
She says school districts don't have to prosecute kids with positive tests, but they can refer students to counseling and inform their parents.
Solberg was just one of about a hundred people at the
Portland summit. Kevin Lamson a father with two kids in the Medford School District also attended. He's been trying to get his district to institute drug tests.
Kevin Lamson: You know, as a parent, when you're asking those pertinent questions: Do kids at your school do drugs? And you would here: Well yeah, just about everybody does. And you think that they're over stating it. So you don't pay any attention, and when you're starting to hear it for a second time coming around. All of a sudden something clicked, and you ought to find out if what they're saying is the truth.
He first started thinking about bringing in motivational speakers--like an athlete or an astronaut--to explain how they succeeded without drugs. Then he stumbled on the idea of random testing. He says that just the rumor that the school district is considering the idea, is helping kids.
Kevin Lamson: I had a 17 year-old come up to me at a pizza parlor. He said, 'Mr. Lamson, I want you to know
I appreciate what you're doing.' He said parents don't realize how hard and how bad it really is . So that's evidence that it's working.
Chris Stephner also attended the Portland Summit. She is the principal of Hackets Town High School in New Jersey. She has about 1,000 students--three quarters of whom attend some kind of extracurricular activity. Of those about 10% are tested each year.
Chris Stephner: We believe it's made a difference in terms of deterrent. It hasn't impacted certainly the kids that are very involved in drug use, because they still are. So we have other programs in place for those. The purpose of doing a random drug-testing program is to really deter students who are at the beginning uses of drug use, or use occasionally or minimally. And are willing to give up that drug use to continue doing something else - like be a member of the football team or the soccer team or the cheerleading squad. So it gives them a reason at a party to say, I might get
tested on Monday I can't take a chance.
But that's not how it works, according to Sandee Burbank, of Mothers Against Misuse and Abuse. The Oregon group tries to educate young people about the dangers of drug use so they can make informed choices.
She says it's the involvement in extra-curricular activities that deters kids from using drugs in the first place.
Sandee Burbank: When the first thing that you have to do is drug test to be involved in any of these extracurricular activities, what we believe is that those students turn away from it completely and then you don't have a chance to engage them or reach out to them at all.
Burbank says drug testing is expensive and many studies also show it doesn't work.
Sandee Burbank: Any parent can walk into a store and buy a drug testing kit. If somebody has that kind of relationship with their child, then I think they should use those drug-testing kits to deal with their own child. Meanwhile I don't
have that kind of distrustful relationship with my children so I don't think that the schools are an appropriate place to do something like this.
The White House says drug use is decreasing in general, with a 17% drop in the last three years. Still, more than five million people end up in treatment each year, one quarter of whom are under the age of 18.
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I turned to speak to God, About the world's despair; But to make bad matters worse, I found God wasn't there.
--Robert Frost, American poet
