Pubdate: [Sat, 21 Dec 1996] Source: Skagit Valley Herald (WA) Author: Clark Battle Your Dec. 11 letter, "Teen Drug Use: The testing has worked," has prompted me to write. Burlington-Edison High School's policy of requiring mandatory drug testing for students wishing to participate in extracurricular activities has a terrible hidden price attached to it. It serves to demonstrate to children that their constitutional rights are optional in the eyes of the governing body. Once citizens become accustomed to abandoning their privacy and dignity for the sake of political hysteria, it is not long before even more intrusive measures are seen as justifiable policy. One school in Minnesota has already instituted random locker searchse with drug-sniffing dogs. Can random strip searches be far off? The biggest tragedy here is not the increase in teen drug use, but the degree to which we are willing to abandon our hard-won constitutional rights. If the students had been taught the value of their liberty and learned of the millions of lives sacrificed to obtain it, then this policy might not have been so complacently accepted by those who don't know what it really represents. Maybe then they would have understood the relevant meaning of Benjamin Franklin's often cited quote: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759. Clark Battle Secane, Pa