[ OUR OPINION ]

Drug tests are not likely
to reduce ‘ice’ use

THE ISSUE State House and Senate leaders have agreed to form a joint committee to address the use of crystal methamphetamine.

STATE legislative leaders have good reason to form a joint House-Senate committee to address the growing problem of crystal methamphetamine, or "ice." They would be mistaken, though, to steer the committee into launching a program of mandatory drug testing in public schools. Such an undertaking would be expensive to operate and to defend in court and, most important, probably would not lead to reduced use of the dangerous drug.

Senate President Robert Bunda called for mandatory testing of students in his opening day address to the Legislature in January. The proposal was supported by Governor Lingle, Lt. Gov. Duke Aiona, who was a former Drug Court judge, and city Prosecutor Peter Carlisle. John Walters, President Bush's drug czar, also favors drug testing. The Legislature prudently declined to enact such legislation, but Bunda wants the joint committee to consider the tactic.

In lieu of the state's budget problems, the high cost of such a project should have been enough to put drug testing in schools on the back burner; a typical drug test costs from $10 to $30 per student. Also, drug testing of students has been challenged on privacy grounds wherever it has been attempted. A federal judge in Texas struck down a public school district's mandatory drug testing of students two years ago. In April, a federal appeals court in Cincinnati negated a Michigan law that required drug testing for parents applying for welfare benefits.

This expensive battle is being waged in various places over a strategy that doesn't seem to work. A federally financed, nationwide survey conducted by social scientists at the University of Michigan and published in the Journal of School Health concluded last month that drug use at schools where drug testing has been tried is about as commonplace as at schools where students are not tested.

The survey of 76,000 students at 891 schools found drug testing to have had no significant effect on drug use. Among 12th-graders, 37 percent of students reported having smoked marijuana last year at schools where students were tested, while 36 percent reported having smoked pot at schools without drug tests. Seniors who had tried heroin or cocaine accounted for 21 percent at drug-test schools and 19 percent at schools with no tests.

If drug tests work, the only possible explanation for the study results is that the drug tests were taken at schools that previously had much higher drug use than those schools where no tests were conducted, and the drug tests brought the schools down to a normal level of drug use. There is no indication that was the case.

"The way that drug testing in the schools has been carried out looks very unpromising," said Lloyd Johnston, the study's lead researcher. "I have no doubt one could design drug-testing programs that could deter teen drug use, but at what monetary cost and what cost in terms of the intrusion into the privacy of our young people?"

Hawaii legislators should ask themselves those questions and then move on to more practical and less intrusive methods of coping with the "ice" problem.