Pubdate: Tue, 30 Mar 2004 Source: Post and Courier, The (Charleston, SC) Copyright: 2004 Evening Post Publishing Co. Contact: http://www.charleston.net/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/567 Author: Sharon Fratepietro DRUG POLICY REPORT Let me add more documented evidence to op-ed columnist Leonard Pitts' charge on March 2 that the Bush administration "feels free to censor, manipulate and ignore" scientific facts for political gain. Pitts was referring to a recent report by the Union of Concerned Scientists that lists a shocking series of such abuses by the Bush White House. Here's an unreported example. Your paper on Feb. 29 described President Bush's new anti-drug strategy to encourage and fund drug testing of students because, the president said, drug testing has caused declines in illegal drug use by students. Furthermore, on March 1, the White House National Drug Control Strategy report to Congress said that drug use among students declined by 11 percent between 2001 and 2003. One of the above assertions is true and the other is false, and you can see proof of this online at www.monitoringthefuture.org. The White House relies on the University of Michigan's "Monitoring the Future" student surveys to formulate White House drug policy -- but only when the results suit White House political goals. Otherwise, it just ignores unwelcome results. Monitoring the Future did show the decline in student drug use, but the organization also issued a report on May 19, 2003, indisputably showing that drug use is as frequent in schools with testing as in schools without it. This federally financed survey covered 76,000 students and 891 schools across the country. It is the only large or nationally representative sample of schools that has ever been used to evaluate the effectiveness of school drug testing. The dishonesty of the Bush administration about this and other scientific matters is a serious matter. It is also unconscionable for the president to waste $25 million of our tax money by offering it to schools to drug test students under a false premise. SHARON FRATEPIETRO President South Carolinians for Drug Law Reform - --- MAP posted-by: Josh