Pubdate: Mon, 14 Jun 1999
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 1999 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Forum: http://www10.nytimes.com/comment/
Author: Christopher S. Wren

HAIR TESTING BY SCHOOLS INTENSIFIES DRUG DEBATE

NEW ORLEANS -- Hair testing to detect illicit drug use, a procedure
already popular with at least 1,000 employers in the United States, is
now being adopted by some schools, opening a new chapter in the
continuing debate over the best way to keep adolescents from
experimenting with drugs.

De la Salle High School here, which is affiliated with the Brothers of
the Christian Schools, a Roman Catholic order, began testing the hair
of its 870 students in March 1998 in a pilot program sponsored by
Psychemedics Corp., the leading hair-testing company. Five other
Catholic schools in the New Orleans region have followed suit.

"Our motivation is to provide a good place for kids to learn and
develop," said Yvonne Gelpi, De la Salle's president, "and if you keep
that in focus, it enables you to do the right thing."

Parents seem relieved that the school has assumed some of the burden
of keeping their children off drugs. And hair testing deters drug use,
some teachers say, by giving teen-agers an excuse to resist peer pressure.

"It's very simple," said Joseph Hines, De la Salle's dean of students.
" 'My school drug-tests me; I can't do it.' "

Yet the federal government, which has set strict standards for urine
testing, has not done so for hair tests because it has yet to be
convinced of their accuracy. And the American Civil Liberties Union
opposes random testing, whether or not someone is suspected of drug
use.

"We're always concerned about testing people who haven't done anything
wrong," said Lewis Maltby, director of the employment rights office of
the ACLU. Hair testing, Maltby said, "is growing fast and that's what
alarms us. The problem is easy to state: It doesn't work. It's not
reliable."

Private schools can make drug tests a condition of enrollment without
inviting lawsuits. But now two public high school principals in New
Orleans want to test their students, too, raising the prospect of a
legal battle with national ramifications.

"It is an invasion of privacy," said Joe Cook, executive director of
the ACLU of Louisiana. "What somebody's done over the last 90 days
without harming anyone is nobody's business."

Harry Connick, the district attorney of Orleans Parish, which includes
New Orleans, argues that hair testing at school is constitutional
because it meets the criteria for protecting health and safety
concerns stemming from drug use.

"What's wrong with taking a piece of hair from your head?" Connick
asked.

As he pointed out, drug tests of school athletes in Oregon and of
students engaged in extracurricular activities in Indiana and Arkansas
have been upheld in court.

Raymond Kubacki Jr., president of Psychemedics, which is based in
Cambridge, Mass., said 80 schools, mostly private, in 26 states were
using Psychemedics to test their students for drugs.

Hair testing is based on the premise that drugs ingested in the body
travel through the bloodstream and are deposited in hair follicles
roughly in proportion to the amount taken. Traces remain in the hair,
disclosing how long the drugs have been used.

"Think of it as rings of a tree," Kubacki said.

Since hair grows at the rate of a half-inch a month, the test uses the
inch and a half closest to the scalp to detect drug use for the last
90 days. A hair sample the diameter of a shoelace tip is clipped and
sent to a laboratory, which liquefies the follicles to measure the
presence of five drugs: marijuana, heroin, cocaine, amphetamine and
phencyclidine, or PCP.

Government researchers have raised questions about whether drug
molecules bind more to coarser black hair than to finer blond or
brownish hair, creating racial or gender disparities, and whether
passive exposure to marijuana or other smoked drugs could produce a
false positive.

"It's not a matter of detecting it in hair but in interpreting what
you find," said Michael Welch, a research chemist for the National
Institute of Standards and Technology. "Experienced labs generally do
a pretty good job of identifying what's in hair."

But Welch added: "It's potentially possible that people could have
detectable levels in their hair without ever using the drug. I think
it's going to take more research before these problems are resolved."

Kubacki said Psychemedics used a patented method that distinguished
between external contamination and ingestion by thoroughly washing the
hair sample beforehand and identifying not just the drug but also its
metabolite, a substance produced by the body's metabolism. Before the
test, the process also extracts the melanin, which gives hair its
color, he said.

Tom Mieczkowski, a professor of criminology at the University of South
Florida who specializes in the technology of drug testing, said hair
testing was as accurate as urinalysis. Because bodily fluids like
urine are excreted swiftly, Mieczkowski said, "hair testing is almost
the only thing we have" to gauge longer-term drug use.

Hair testing is used by courts, police forces and other
law-enforcement agencies. Connick, the district attorney, said his
office had been using the tests "with excellent results" to evaluate
drug offenders for diversion into treatment programs.

"It's a great method of detecting a history of drug use," he said.
"The larger time frame allows you to find out what the defendant has
been using."

But his office supplements hair testing with urinalysis to learn
whether offenders have used drugs in the last day or so.

Rosemary Mumm, the diversionary-program director, said, "That tells us
they probably won't stop on their own."

When Psychemedics offered a year's free hair testing for two schools
in New Orleans, De la Salle High School accepted, followed by St.
Augustine High School. De la Salle sends more than 90 percent of its
students to college. But it had enough of a problem that teen-agers
jokingly called the school "De la Drugs."

The reputation was unwarranted, Ms. Gelpi said, but she assumed that
some youngsters were trying drugs.

"If it's nationwide, it's in our city," said Ms. Gelpi, who functions
as chief executive officer of the school. "If it's in our city, it's
in our schools. We've got to take some big steps to get away from drugs."

De la Salle's principal, Brother Jeffrey Callaghan, told a packed
meeting of parents in December 1997 that the school wanted to start
testing their children.

"It's the only standing ovation I've ever received at a parents'
meeting," Callaghan said.

Before Christmas vacation that year, he warned the students that hair
testing would start the following March, giving them three months to
stop any drug use.

Ruth Janes, a junior at the time, said, "Girls really flipped out,
because they thought they were going to have their hair cut." Panic
subsided once they learned that the hair taken would be cosmetically
inconspicuous.

"My mom and dad thought it was great," said Ms. Janes, 18. "They
didn't have a problem with privacy, and it was one less thing they had
to worry about because the school was doing it."

Her classmate Christian Moises, 17, wore his hair cropped so short
that Hines, the dean of students, had to apply scissors to the young
man's leg to collect enough body hair.

"It wasn't that big a deal," Christian said. "I have nothing to hide,
so it doesn't bother me one way or the other."

Christian's mother, Jennifer Moises, said she had mixed feelings at
first because of the privacy issue. "I felt confident that my son
would pass it," Mrs. Moises said, "but I also felt sorry for the
parents whose children failed the test."

But most parents, she said, "thought it was a very good idea and
couldn't understand why it hadn't been done before."

With three months' notice, only 28 of De la Salle's 870 students
tested positive for drugs.

"If you'd asked me what it would have been," Ms. Gelpi said, "I'd have
said much higher."

Individual results were released only to parents of students who
tested positive, and the students were quietly referred for drug
counseling. When the students who failed were retested several months
later, only three, all white females, failed. This year, 12 students
tested positive. Three others transferred to different schools rather
than be tested.

Students are now tested at least once a year, at an annual,
per-student cost of about $55, which has been added to De la Salle's
tuition.

"What parent wouldn't pay $55 to know that their child is drug-free?"
Ms. Gelpi asked.

Now Vincent Nzinga, the principal of Frederick Douglass High School, a
public school whose 1,300 students are overwhelmingly black and often
poor, wants them tested, too.

"The vast majority of them want to go somewhere, they want to be
somebody," Nzinga said. "I want to give them all the advantages I can."

He has petitioned the Orleans Parish School Board to permit drug
testing, and the board will decide this summer.

"I don't believe we need to sweep any problem under the rug," Nzinga
said. "If there's a problem, what people want to know is that we're
doing something about it."

Alcee Fortier High School, another public school in New Orleans, also
wants hair testing for drugs.

The ACLU will challenge drug testing in New Orleans public schools as
a violation of protections against unreasonable search and seizure and
invasion of privacy in both the U.S. Constitution and the Louisiana
constitution, said Cook, the ACLU executive director in Louisiana.

But Connick, the district attorney, said that if parents approved,
hair testing should be extended to every public school in New Orleans.

"They have enough problems educating students," he said, "but the
problem is magnified because of drugs."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Derek Rea