7 Reasons Parents Should Not Test Kids for Drug Use | DrugReporter | AlterNet
When Kim Manlove and his wife discovered that their teenage son was abusing pot and alcohol, they did what they thought was right: They purchased commercially available drug-testing kits and began administering random urine screens at home. “We thought we’d be able to handle it on our own,” recalls Manlove, 56, of Indianapolis. And for several months it appeared that their efforts were working. The drug tests, obtained on the Internet, consistently indicated that 15-year-old David was alcohol free and that his marijuana levels were decreasing, which they interpreted as a sign that he was quitting. Not so. Their son had switched to drugs that the tests couldn’t detect, such as prescription pills and LSD. When his parents finally caught on, they enrolled him in treatment. “Things were beyond our capability,” says Manlove.

David completed the program, but his desire to get high ultimately cost him his life, Manlove explains. Enticed by the notion that inhalants wouldn’t register on his weekly, now professionally administered urine tests, David and his friends spent an afternoon huffing an aerosol (computer duster) and diving into a swimming pool because they’d heard the underwater pressure would heighten the rush. Instead, doing so triggered what’s known as “sudden sniffing death syndrome,” the gravest consequence of inhalants. David had a heart attack and drowned at age 16.

It is the cruelest irony of marijuana: the drug that is the safest is the one that is most easily detectable in drug testing (urine tests may detect marijuana 1-5 days after an occasional use, 1-3 weeks in regular users, and 4-6 weeks in multiple daily users).  Thus, drug testing provides incentives for drug users to move on, like David Manlove, to drugs that are not detectable on screens.  If David took a swim while high on pot he would still be alive today.

This part of the message of the SAFER campaign.  In college, young adults are kicked out of student housing and denied federal student aid if they are caught with marijuana.  Thus there is an incentive to party instead with binge drinking of alcohol.  While the hangover may suck, at least they won’t kick you out of school.

Drug testing your kids is no substitute for talking to them.  Get a copy of Dr. Mitch Earleywine’s Parents Guide to Marijuana and learn how.

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This news release just in from MPP:

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Drug Czar John Walters’ scheduled appearance at a press conference this morning to announce a new SAMHSA report on the dangers of teen inhalant abuse flies in the face of his office’s misplaced priorities, officials of the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C. said today. MPP noted that Walters’ just-released National Drug Control Strategy virtually ignores deadly inhalants while continuing Walters’ obsessive focus on marijuana, the least dangerous of illicit drugs.

“It’s long been known that inhalants kill, but John Walters has ignored the problem since he became drug czar, while maintaining an obsessive focus on marijuana,” said Aaron Houston, MPP’s director of government relations. “The 2008 National Drug Control Strategy mentions inhalants exactly twice, once in a graph and once in the acknowledgments section — but it mentions marijuana 116 times, 28 in the introduction alone.

“As a parent, I’m appalled at the drug czar’s priorities,” Houston continued. “As the media advisory for Walters’ press conference points out, inhalants can kill the very first time you use them, and their use often comes before marijuana or other drugs. We absolutely think kids shouldn’t smoke marijuana, but marijuana has never caused a fatal overdose, and it doesn’t cause the sort of permanent damage to the brain, liver and other organs that inhalants like solvents and paint thinner can. The lives of our children are being sacrificed to John Walters’ obsessive crusade against marijuana, and one window-dressing press conference isn’t enough to change that.”

Walters is scheduled to appear with SAMHSA officials and others at a 9:30 a.m. National Press Club news conference today to discuss the new inhalants report.

Ah, but see, there is no major industry that tests for inhalant use. There isn’t a massive prison/industrial complex dependent on increasing arrests of inhalant users. There isn’t a groundswell of popular opinion to legalize medical use of inhalants. And there isn’t any threat to the budget or the salary of the Drug Czar from the decriminalization of inhalants.

You’re fooling yourself if you believe that this has anything to do with keeping your kids safe. John Walters’ marijuana obsession has a whole lot to do with keeping drug warriors’ jobs safe.

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