Posted on 10/31/2002 4:57:12 AM PST by Wolfie
Dole Links License To Drug Test
Elizabeth Dole wants to require all teenagers to pass a drug test before getting a driver's license. Dole, the Republican U.S. Senate candidate and a former transportation secretary, has promised to push for a federal law pressuring states to enforce such a measure. "Wouldn't that help them understand how important it is to be drug free?" Dole asked at a recent campaign stop in Washington, N.C. "It's not cool (to abuse drugs). It kills."
Then-President Bill Clinton proposed a nearly identical measure in 1996 while campaigning against Dole's husband, former Sen. Bob Dole, and offered federal grants to states the following year. Campaign officials for Elizabeth Dole said they were unaware of the Clinton initiative.
Dole included the pre-license drug test as part of her "Dole Plan for North Carolina" this year, proposing that teens who test positive must complete a drug counseling course and pass a subsequent test before getting a license.
The test could be bypassed. Parents who don't want their children to take a drug test could just say no and waive the requirement, said Mary Brown Brewer, Dole's communications director.
"You can't solely address illegal drugs from the supply side. You have to address it from the demand side," Brewer said. "When you turn 16, you look so forward to getting that driver's license ... This is a pretty strong incentive not to do anything that would prevent you from getting that driver's license."
Dole has made "less government" a campaign mantra, as have many Republicans, which makes it striking that she would embrace an invasive expansion of government duties and authority. Last year, nearly 62,000 N.C. teens got their first driver's license.
A spokesman for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said he was unaware of any states enacting such a program after the Clinton push.
Dole's opponent, Democrat Erskine Bowles, said he would like to talk with law enforcement officials, parents and teenagers before proposing such a measure.
The testing presents practical obstacles and legal questions. State motor vehicles administrations would suddenly face the costs of processing drug tests through a laboratory, not to mention the idea of testing youngsters who haven't been accused of anything. U.S. courts, though, have repeatedly upheld the constitutionality of drug tests.
Several states have zero tolerance laws on alcohol use, requiring that teens lose their license if caught driving with any of alcohol in their blood. The alcohol tests, though, are administered after a youth has been stopped on suspicion of drinking.
Substance-abuse experts said drug testing works as an incentive to keep youths from abusing drugs but likely only until they pass that checkpoint.
"Drug testing has always been a false promise that it would help us somehow by threatening people and make them stop so they wouldn't get into trouble," said John P. Morgan, a physician and City University of New York medical professor who has studied drug testing for 15 years.
He said the vast majority of positive drug tests detect nothing stronger than marijuana, and occasional smokers need only stop for a couple of weeks to pass.
Carl Shantzis, executive director of Substance Abuse Prevention Services in Charlotte, said prevention policy requires follow-up.
"Once teenagers get a license," Shantzis said, "the question is what kind of other incentives are there to keep them from abusing alcohol or other drugs."
3) sexual molestors (including in my Church and in my kids' Church schools) (two homosexual men in my Church and Church school caught for molesting teenage boys - and one boy killed by a molestor at the town carnival by suffocation after being anally raped), 4) people who would encourage my kids to do drugs, (happens all the time at parties in my town and in the schools) 5) people who would encourage my kids to do bad things (a constant difficulty in today's society) 6) violent bullies (two kids attacked in my kids' school), etc. etc. etc.
And this new law that Dole wants would have prevented all these bad things?
We all want our loved ones to be safe but I don't see where this would help.
You trying to make passing the test too HARD....
No, you come back.
If someone is operating a vehicle on a federal highway while they are stoned, I think that is the government's business.
But giving pee tests to every adolescent is not the government's business.
Kind of reminds me of a WWII poem.
Hey you can call it anything you want, but I know which side you are on.
If you were king all drugs would be legalised and a "paradise" would ensue, kinda of like the liberal democrats thinking that if defense spending was eliminated a "paradise" would ensue.
That must be why voters Alaska, Washington state, Oregon, California, Hawaii, Colorado, Nevada and Maine have all voted for anti-Drug-War measures.
Honestly, tacticalogic, it depends. From a legal perspective, I believe its unconsitutional to force states to do this - unless states are collecting federal funds for roads, and this is made a condition of accepting those funds. States have a right NOT to accept such funds, and to not be mandated about this - unless states' citizens want their states to. The fact is, many voters would rather have their state get millions of federal dollars for roads, even if it meant accepting some federal rules. You obviously don't like that. But if the state's citizens are for that, then I don't see what's unconsitutional about it. It's just a deal between the federal and state governments. - On the moral plane, one has to ask the question - how many people's lives or well-being would actually be saved by such a measure. If you told me that 10,000 kids' lives would be saved by such a measure over the next five years - that would be far, far different from saving 1 kid's life over five years. As I said above, liberarians never understand that some freedoms are inevitably abused - causing death or horrible injury - and that laws meant to prevent such have to be weighed against freedoms taken away. The government (at all levels) does that all the time. We're forced by law to wear seat belts in my state - and thousands of lives (including those of children) have been saved, on average. That's anti-liberatian - but the vast majority of citizens in my state approve, because they know that many lives are being saved. - There is NO inherent constitutional right to not wear seat belts or to be on drugs and get your drivers license. Sorry about that. (NO, actually, I'm not!)
C'mon, philman_36. Politicans only pander if there are a lot of people to pander to!
Yeah, right, Joe. A town that wants to prevent an innocent child from again being brutally maimed is juuuuuuuuuuust like the Nazi government... C'mon. Get real.
Yep, same argument Dolt used when pushing to force the states to accept the seat belt law and same argument she used for airbags. If I want to fly through the windshield in a car accident, that's my choice. I've never worn a seatbelt and I never will
I do, however, believe that the issue is one that should be handled by the individual states and not in a federal venue.
80% think it's O.K. to dispense pot for medical purposes, and 72% think people caught with it for recreational use should get off with only a fine... CNN Time poll this last week. But... they only called libertarians I am sure ;)
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