Pubdate: Wed, 14 Dec 2011
Source: Idaho Mountain Express (ID)
Copyright: 2011 Express Publishing, Inc
Contact:  http://www.mtexpress.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2296
Author: Mark Spencer

STUDENTS DESERVE HONEST DEBATE OVER DRUG USE

We must turn away from panic and fear.

What a terrible notion that we would decide as a community to haul 
our youth into school and force them to urinate in a cup to test for 
substances that may or may not be causing them harm. The idea that 
further tightening the straightjacket around our kids will control 
their behavior and set them on the right course is patently false and 
rife with logical fallacy. Studies such as a 2003 University of 
Michigan "Monitoring the Future" survey have shown that there is 
little statistical difference between student drug use at schools 
where testing is conducted and those where it is not.

It should also be noted that in 2007, the American Academy of 
Pediatrics recommended against student drug testing on the basis that 
specific methods for dealing with adolescent abuse excepting punitive 
measures would be better for kids. Taken in this context, I wonder 
what the Drug Coalition proposes to do with students who test 
positive--kick them off the football team or out of the debate club? 
Suspend them or expel them? Any punitive measure will no doubt 
include further ostracizing them from the education they desperately need.

We owe our students an honest debate about drug use. We owe them 
honest answers, which address their fundamental need for 
experimentation. Engaging in draconian end-point policy not only sets 
a precedent for invasion of privacy, it rushes headlong into judgment 
while ignoring the fundamental basis of clear-headed decision-making 
that lies in a well-educated and informed student--a student who is 
engaged with adults who offer them respect and freedom to make their 
own wise decisions. We should spend our time as a community looking 
for ways to focus on our students' accomplishments, extending them 
opportunity and uplifting them, not treating them as prisoners in the 
gulag. We can force our students into drug testing, we can force them 
out of extracurricular activities and out of school entirely, but we 
will not force them to choose to stop using drugs. This choice can 
only be made through personal experience and inner strength, which 
sometimes includes experi! mentation with drugs.

The Drug Coalition members would be better serving the students if 
they spent their time crafting a message that extended respect and 
understanding to a student's ability to make informed choices based 
on sound and truthful information, not in perpetuating the 30 years 
of hysteria and failed drug policy that have failed to produce 
measurable statistical differences in students' drug use.

As for the notion that the entire community has a drug problem, I 
would like to note that the entire community is better educated, 
wealthier and healthier than the national average. We will only 
succeed in ending drug abuse in our community when we address the 
root problems that begin the cycle of abuse--poverty, disparity in 
wealth, lack of opportunity, lack of education and a system that 
treats addicts as criminals. Despite what the Supreme Court may have 
ruled (the same Supreme Court that has run roughshod over individual 
rights and freedoms of recent), we must turn to a drug policy that 
doesn't begin this cycle on the front steps of our schools. We must 
turn away from panic and fear, and choose to treat our students with 
respect and compassion.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom