Pubdate: Tue, 18 Mar 2008 Source: Daily News, The (Longview, WA) Copyright: 2008 The Daily News Contact: http://www.tdn.com/forms/letters.php Website: http://www.tdn.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2621 Author: Stephanie Mathieu Note: The decision http://drugsense.org/url/O7Q69Ca8 Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/testing.htm (Drug Testing) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?225 (Students - United States) WAHKIAKUM SCHOOL CHIEF LAMENTS LOSS OF DRUG TESTS Wahkiakum School Superintendent Bob Garrett says the drug testing policy the state Supreme Court struck down Thursday was helping keep students clean. "Kids were telling us the policy's working," Garrett said Monday. "Because of the policy, they were using less or not using at all." The state's high court ruled that random, or suspicionless, testing of student athletes violates personal freedoms protected by the Washington Constitution. The 9-0 ruling overturned a 2006 Wahkiakum County Superior Court decision in which Judge Douglas E. Goelz ruled the testing policy was justified because drug use was a "real and serious threat" to the school. Since the 2007-08 school year started, two students randomly selected tested positive for drug use, Garrett said. Student athletes who test positive for substance abuse miss playing time and get referred to counseling. The district used the random drug testing in partnership with other drug prevention programs, Garrett said. He said school officials haven't decided whether to adopt new programs in place of the rejected policy. "It is interesting as you read the different justices' opinions about this decision," Garrett said. "We didn't get a clear-cut, definitive decision." There were three separate concurring opinions, and at least one justice said random suspicionless drug testing should be OK under "carefully defined circumstances." Also, the opinions didn't rule out other forms of testing, including saliva tests, Garrett said. The opinions said Wahkiakum's policy is wrong, but they did not describe a drug testing policy that would pass constitutional review, he added. The school district adopted the policy in October 1999, saying attempts to curb widespread drug use through other intervention programs weren't working. In 1998, 42 percent of the district's high school seniors surveyed said they had used illegal drugs. In its first full year of use, six randomly tested students checked positive for drugs, Garrett said. However, Wahkiakum parents Paul and Sharon Schneider and Hans and Katherine York sued over the testing policy, and their case was taken up by the American Civil Liberties Union. As a result, the district suspended the testing program in 2001, resuming it only after the favorable 2006 lower court decision. A handful of public schools across the state had adopted similar drug testing rules, and other school districts were awaiting the Supreme Court's decision before adopting similar policies, according to the ACLU. Garrett on Monday also took issue with one of the studies the ACLU highlighted as showing random drug testing doesn't work. The study in question, conducted by Oregon Health & Science University last year, said random drug testing drives students to rebel or use harder drugs that leave their systems faster. Garrett said the study did not offer consequences to students beyond parental notification, such as the loss of sports playing time, as Wahkiakum's policy did. "We weren't doing what (the OHSU) test was doing," Garrett said. "That's not comparing apples to apples. . We do believe (the policy) was effective." - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake