Pubdate: Tue, 02 Oct 2005
Source: Central Leader (New Zealand)
Copyright: 2005 Central Leader
Contact:  http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3532
Author: Tim Hume
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/testing.htm (Drug Test)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth)

SCHOOLS PROMOTE DRUG TEST

Hundreds of teenagers are being tested for drug use at an Auckland District 
Health Board laboratory which is marketing its services to high schools.

LabPlus, which is owned by the ADHB, carries out non-evidential tests on 
urine from 45 teens a month as part of its rapidly-expanding schools 
programme, started last year.

The $30 tests, conducted on consenting students from 25 schools in the 
upper North Island, are part of a growing trend towards keeping drug users 
at school, rather than expelling them.

As part of the conditions for being allowed to stay in class, many schools 
have for years been randomly testing students caught using drugs.

But demand has increased since LabPlus began advertising in schools.

LabPlus business development manager Ross Hewett said testing was becoming 
more popular as schools realised expelling drug users was short-sighted.

Suspended students were stripped of the support network that might be their 
only hope in addressing their drug problem.

"It does not help their educational needs or enhance their future in 
society," he said.

But Drug Foundation executive director Ross Bell said that although testing 
and counselling students was preferable to suspending them, he had 
reservations about laboratories "making lots of money by playing on the 
hysteria surrounding drugs in schools".

He saw the tests LabPlus carried out for suspicious parents as destructive 
to family relationships.

Most of LabPlus' business came from schools but about 10 jobs a month are 
from parents.

Laboratories in Wellington and Christchurch also each process a handful of 
teen drug tests a month.

Dr Chris Florkowski, chemical pathologist at Canterbury Health 
Laboratories, said the lab had been conducting three or four drug tests a 
month for schools for the past 18 months.

Morrinsville College principal John Inger, who has urged parents to 
drug-test their teens, said fewer schools were suspending students, opting 
instead for counselling programmes involving drug testing.

"There's a realisation that suspending kids is driving them to drugs rather 
than away from them," he said.

Drug-related suspensions fell from 1471 in 2002 to 1230 last year, while 
stand-downs have fallen from 1077 to 986.

Hewett said students caught using drugs were randomly tested on average 
twice a year. School nurses collected the samples and parents paid the $30 
cost of the test kit and courier.

Nearly all tests were for cannabis. He said the strategy was proving 
successful in addressing school drug problems but refused to privacy 
reasons to give details on the number of positive tests.

The Sunday Star-Times reported last week that wealthy Auckland parents were 
paying up to $100,000 for private investigators to spy on their teens' drug 
use, then hand over the evidence to the police if their child would not 
enter rehabilitation.
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D