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."

It will force kids who want drivers licenses to get off of drugs.

Naive thought at best. Could you name the drugs that are actually visible in a screening? Practical all drugs will leave no trace in the body after 24hrs. So it will take the kids to get of drugs for a day or so. Great.

Even more importantly, it will show kids semi-addicted to drugs that they can get off of them

How so?

Evem more importantly, it will show kids that we have certain expectations about right behavior before getting the coveted drivers license.

It will show those kids who have never taken any drugs that they are subject to search by government at any time. They will learn the lesson that they are guilty until they are proven innocent. Great.

Finally, some deaths and mutilations from car crashes from kids on drugs will be averted.

The idea that kids wont take drugs because of this little test is almost as idiotic as the idea that kids wont get drugs because of the WOD.

It comes from people voting democratically for representatives who pass it into law, providing that such in not unconstitutional - just like every other law in this nation. Given that it's not unconsitutional (it isn't, according to the Supreme court)

Cite? (And please don't expect me to search for your information)

where does a teen have the right not to have a drug screening?

I told you. Of course, we already agreed to disagree. I happen to think the rights of an Individual come first, where you grand the society more power. You are in favor of the WOD and for mandatory testing of teenagers. You want a big, intrusive goverment. You get what you want.

Charles Evans Hughes, Justice of the supreme Court (1907): "... the Constitution is what the judges say it is."

"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."
John Adams

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