Summit to cover testing students for drugs
Speakers will describe how to apply for funds from the White House
At a drug summit at the Sheraton-Waikiki Hotel today, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy is expected to make a case for random student drug testing.
"The purpose of the summit is simply to provide background material and information in case a school district decides that this is what they would like to do," said Bertha Madras, the office's deputy director for demand reduction.
The White House has announced the U.S. Department of Education will award grants totaling $1.6 million to 11 schools or school districts for school-based student drug testing programs starting this fall. The deadline to submit grant applications is May 8.
But Madras says the purpose of the summit is not to encourage people to apply.
In addition to Madras, today's speakers include Lt. Gov. James Aiona, attorney Bill Judge, who for the past 23 years has been involved in the legal issues of drug and alcohol testing, and Chris Steffner, who as principal of a New Jersey high school developed a random student drug testing program.
Aiona, who is Gov. Linda Lingle's point man on the administration's drug use prevention policy, is an advocate of drug testing in the schools.
In 2003, then-Senate President Robert Bunda proposed a pilot mandatory drug testing program in the schools. But that proposal died, and subsequent proposals failed to even get a hearing.
The state Board of Education has not moved to allow schools to drug-test their students, but is allowing Maui District schools to have drug-sniffing dogs on campus under a pilot project.
Opponents of drug testing argued that studies do not show that drug testing significantly affects drug use.
In the first two years of drug testing at her school, Steffner said, there was one positive test result from 70 students in the first year and no positives from 150 students tested the second year. The school has an enrollment of about 1,000, but only about 700 are eligible for drug testing.
"If the program works, you're not going to get a lot of positives because you're deterring the students from even using," Steffner said.
There are few studies on the effectiveness of drug-testing students, and the federal government does not require schools that receive grants for testing programs to report test result statistics.
Opponents also argue that drug testing violates students' privacy rights.
In 2002 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld drug testing for students involved in extracurricular activities.
Judge said parents can volunteer their children into a drug-testing program because "until they're (the students) 18, they (the parents) can do anything they want to, within the limits of the law, of course."
But University of Hawaii William S. Richardson School of Law professor Jon Van Dyke said the Hawaii Constitution has a stricter view of individuals' right to privacy.