American Civil Liberties Union : Making Sense of Student Drug Testing: Why Educators Are Saying No

WASHINGTON – The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy is conducting the latest in a series of regional summits designed to convince local educators to begin drug testing students randomly and without cause – a policy unsupported by the available science and opposed by leading experts in adolescent health, including the Academy of Pediatrics, National Education Association, the Association of Addiction Professionals and the National Association of Social Workers.

“Subjecting students to unsubstantiated searches flies in the face of the values taught in our nation’s classrooms,” said ACLU Legislative Counsel Jesselyn McCurdy. “Random drug testing is not only ineffective in preventing teen drug use, it’s counter-productive. We know that the threat of random drug testing can discourage students from participating in the very activities proven to reduce drug use, such as high school sports. It marginalizes already at-risk teens and undermines trust between students and educators.”

While the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that random drug testing of students involved in extracurricular activities does not violate the Constitution, many state constitutions provide stronger privacy protections, disallowing such testing schemes. For example, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court found random drug testing of students unconstitutional under state law in 2003, and the Washington Supreme Court most recently declared it unconstitutional in March of this year.

In addition to exposing schools to costly litigation, studies have found that suspicionless drug testing is ineffective in deterring student drug use. The first large-scale national study on student drug testing in 2003 found no difference in rates of student drug use between schools that have drug testing programs and those that do not. In addition, the results of a two-year trial published last November in the Journal of Adolescent Health concluded random drug testing targeting student athletes did not reliably reduce past month drug use and, in fact, produced attitudinal changes among students that indicate new risk factors for future substance use.

WA high court says random school drug testing unconstitutional
OLYMPIA, Wash. — The state Supreme Court ruled Thursday that random drug testing of student athletes is unconstitutional, finding that each has “a genuine and fundamental privacy interest in controlling his or her own bodily functions.”

The court ruled unanimously in favor of some parents and students in the lower Columbia River town of Cathlamet who were fighting the tiny Wahkiakum School District’s policy of random urine tests of middle school and high school student athletes.

The high court wrote, “we can conceive of no way to draw a principled line permitting drug testing only student athletes.”

“If we were to allow random drug testing here, what prevents school districts from either later drug testing students participating in any extracurricular activities, as federal courts now allow, or testing the entire student population?” Justice Richard Sanders wrote for the court’s plurality. Joining him were Chief Justice Gerry Alexander and Justices Susan Owens and Tom Chambers.

“In particular, the school district has failed to show that a suspicion-based regime of drug testing is inadequate to achieve its legitimate objectives,” [Justice Barbara] Madsen wrote.

Madsen wrote that if there is not an observable drug problem in the school, “the school’s interest in detecting drug use does not justify nonconsensual drug testing.”

She wrote that if drug use is a problem, then schools have the individualized suspicion necessary to require a drug test.

“Thus, it is difficult to see how a suspicionless drug testing program is necessary,” she wrote.

Hooray for the Pacific Northwest (yeah, I’m biased)! It’s nice when your state constitution provides you more privacy protections than the United States Constitution… just ask the people of Alaska, where personal possession of <1oz. of cannabis at home and growing <25 plants is protected as a privacy right.

I particularly like Justice Madsen’s commonsense opinion: If you can’t see a drug problem, there’s no need to test randomly, and if you can see the drug problem, then you’ll know who to test!