This from the Daily Herald. St. Viator, a suburban Chicago school is instituting a drug testing program for ALL students. WHAT A CONCEPT.
If combating drug use among youths is as strong a public policy concern as some of the hysterical ramblings we've heard lately regarding Performance Enhancing Drugs indicate it is, then we should be concerned about and combat drug abuse amongst all students equally. PERIOD.
To do otherwise indicates we are only concerned about athletes harming themselves, and not the chess club. This gives the kids who would normally succumb to peer pressure to use drugs, to be able to say, "Thanks, but if I fail the drug test, my mom won't get me a car for graduation" or whatever.
Besides, high school is supposed to be preparing kids to be productive members of the workforce and many companies today require you to produce a sample or two here and there. Although, they don't test the guy in sales after he lands a big contract for PED's now that I think about it. Not a perfect world, I guess.
St. Viator to drug-test all students in fall
BY SHEILA AHERN
sahern@dailyherald.com
Next fall, St. Viator High School students will map out routes to new classes, memorize locker combos and shop for a homecoming outfit.
This year, they can add this to the autumn back-to-school rituals: a drug test.
The 20-member St. Viator Board of Trustees has unanimously approved a new drug policy where each student will be drug-tested using a strand of hair.
Every student will be tested in the first six weeks of school, and 20 will be randomly tested weekly for the rest of the year, said the Rev. Robert Egan, president of St. Viator.
I bet this will bring back shorter haircuts amongst the boys. The only concern I would have doing it this way is if using hair samples provides a history of drug use that goes back years into the students past.
Each test costs $45. The school has budgeted $65,000 to $75,000 for the drug tests for the 2007-08 school year.
St. Viator now randomly tests for drugs only members of the boys football and hockey teams. A drug dog also visits five times a year, and random students are picked for breathalyzer tests at school dances, Egan said.
Hair samples will be tested for cocaine, opiates, PCP, marijuana, amphetamines and Ecstasy, whose use within 90 days of the test can be detected. It does not detect steroids or alcohol.
A student who refuses to be tested will be kicked out, Egan said.
The faculty and staff will not be tested.
An increasing number of schools are drug-testing athletes or those in other extracurricular activities. According to the National School Boards Association, about 5 percent of school districts drug-test athletes and 2 percent test for extracurricular activities.
In Antioch-Lake Villa High School District 117, students participating in extracurricular activities and those seeking parking permits are drug-tested.
Barker said St. Viator's tactic "seems extreme" and likens it to plopping a metal detector at a high school's front door: It primarily, he says, instills fear and suspicion in the community.
But the program is seen as a huge success at St. Patrick High School in Chicago. Since 2004, the school has spent $60,000 yearly to drug-test every student. Each year, less than 1 percent tests positive for drugs, said school spokesman Chris Nelson.
"The parents couldn't be happier," he said.
Across the nation, drug-testing high-schoolers has become increasingly popular in the past five or six years, said Ed Yohnka, a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union.
Most policies don't last more than a year, he said.
"It give these kids a way out," she said. "It's a better excuse than, 'My mom will kill me.'æ"
• Daily Herald staff writer Erin Holmes contributed to this report.
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