Punitopia news: Debate Stirs Over Testing Students for Drugs

[madmusic]

In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that drug testing of students who participated in extra-curricular activities was a constitutional practice. Richard Glen Boire, Senior Fellow in Law and Policy of the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics, has written about the Supreme Court's ruling. He states,

"The decision not only victimizes our children, it makes them the enemy. Being a public school student is now synonymous with being a criminal suspect or a prisoner. The values of trust and respect have been chased from the schoolyards and replaced with baseless suspicion and omnipresent policing."

A 2003 study entitled Relationship between student illicit drug use and school drug-testing policies, which surveyed 76,000 students across the United States, found no difference in drug use rates between students of schools that have drug-testing programs and those that do not.

A publication called Making Sense of Student Drug Testing: Why Educators Are Saying No demonstrates the key flaws in random student drug testing as well as the components of promising alternatives.

source with the links: http://ncpc.typepad.com/prevention_works_blog/2006/11/drug_testing_in.html

[Donnachaidh]

1. Let's drug test the TEACHERS too.

If it's good for the goose....

[Dora]

2. I think a top-down approach is best.

Let's start with school boards, then move on to testing the superintendents and other higher-up administrators, then principals, coaches, teachers, support staff, and students.

[Donnachaidh]

4. Don't have a problem with that at all.

My kid has had teachers -and- principals in the past that I personally suspected of some form of chemical abuse.

What makes these people exempt?

[sweetheart]

3. I hope they're testing them for all drugs

like alcohol in underaged kiddies, and cigarrettes in underaged kiddies,
those 2 drugs are more likely to destroy a kids life than the drugs they're
probably testing for.

The same percentage of human people have, do and will always be doing drugs,
like there is always some percentage of drugs nazis out to destroy civil liberty.
Test them, don't test them, the same people will do what they do.

[Mythsaje]

5. I have an idea...

Let's test CONGRESS...

Oh, but wait...didn't they say that it would be a violation of their privacy?

Go figure.

[StraightDope]

6. I have a radical idea...

How about we do away with all drug testing of EVERYONE for ANYTHING!

[madmusic]

7. No one is for this?

Even though it doesn't work. That's a surprise.