Posted on 10/08/2002 4:35:09 AM PDT by Wolfie
New Frontier in Random Drug Testing: Checking High Schoolers for Tobacco
Breath mints won't cut it anymore for students who have been smoking in the bathroom -- some schools around the country are administering urine tests to teenagers to find out whether they have been using tobacco.
Opponents say such testing violates students' rights and can keep them out of the extracurricular activities they need to stay on track. But some advocates say smoking in the boys' room is a ticket to more serious drug use.
"Some addicted drug users look back to cigarettes as the start of it all," said Jeff McAlpin, director of marketing for EDPM, a Birmingham drug-testing company.
Short of catching them in the act, school officials previously had no way of proving students had been smoking.
Testing students for drugs has spread in recent years and was given a boost in June when the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed random testing of those in extracurricular activities. Tobacco can easily be added to the usual battery of tests.
"I agree with it," said 16-year-old Vestavia Hills High School junior Rosemary Stafford, a member of the marching band. "It's illegal, it's addictive. Maybe the punishment shouldn't be as severe, but they should test for it."
In Alabama, where the legal age for purchasing and smoking tobacco products is 19, about a dozen districts, mostly in the Birmingham area, test for nicotine along with alcohol and several illegal drugs, including marijuana.
In most cases, the penalties for testing positive for cotinine -- a metabolic byproduct that remains in the body after smoking or chewing tobacco -- are the same as those for illegal drugs: The student's parents are notified and he or she is usually placed on school probation and briefly suspended from sports or other activities.
Alabama's Hoover school system randomly tested 679 of its 1,500 athletes for drug use this past school year. Fourteen high school students tested positive, 12 of them for tobacco.
Elsewhere around the country, schools in Blackford County, Ind., test for tobacco use in athletes, participants in other extracurricular activities, and students who take driver's education or apply for parking permits.
In Lockney, Texas, a federal judge recently struck down the district's testing of all students for the use of drugs, alcohol and tobacco.
In Columbia County, Fla., the school board will vote Tuesday on a testing policy that would include tobacco. Teenagers who take part in extracurricular activities or apply for permits to drive to school would be screened.
"Tobacco does and will affect a larger majority of the students than alcohol or drugs," said Gloria Spizey, the county's coordinator for Safe and Drug-Free Schools. "Tobacco use can be devastating. We felt it needed to stand with the other drugs."
Screenings can detect cotinine for up to 10 days in regular smokers of about a half a pack, or 10 cigarettes, a day, McAlpin said. Experts say it is unlikely that cotinine would collect in people exposed to secondhand smoke.
"Tobacco is illegal for them to have -- it's also a health and safety issue," said Phil Hastings, supervisor of safety and alternative education for schools in Decatur, which recently adopted a testing program that includes tobacco. "We've got a responsibility to let the kids know the dangers of tobacco use."
While random drug testing overall is being fought by the American Civil Liberties Union and students' rights groups, the addition of nicotine testing has drawn little opposition.
Guidelines published last month by the White House drug office do not specifically address tobacco testing.
"On tobacco, we have the same policy as on testing for drugs -- it may not be right for every school and community," said Jennifer de Vallance, press secretary for the office. "We encourage parents and officials to assess the extent and nature of the tobacco problem."
Shawn Heller, executive director of Students for Sensible Drug Policy in Washington, said tobacco use by teen-agers is a major problem, but testing for it is just another step in the invasion of students' privacy.
"We're making schools like prisons," he said.
Observation.
So you recognize the possibility of sincere opposition to anti-drug laws, not motivated by the desire to use drugs? That would be a start.
Paint by the numbers reductionism.
Apples and oranges. The former "right" is wielded against state sovereignty; the latter right is (usually) not. (The latter is also firmly grounded in the plain text of the Constitution, unlike the former.)
Free states have prohibitions on illicit drugs. All fifty states.
Paint by the numbers reductionism.
Nonsense.
re·duc·tion·ism
n.
An attempt or tendency to explain a complex set of facts, entities, phenomena, or structures by another, simpler set: “For the last 400 years science has advanced by reductionism... The idea is that you could understand the world, all of nature, by examining smaller and smaller pieces of it. When assembled, the small pieces would explain the whole” (John Holland).
Distortion. Roe v. Wade limits state or federal restrictions on abortion, based on an invented "Constitutional right."
Distortion. Roe v. Wade limits state or federal restrictions on abortion, based on an invented "Constitutional right."
I have no idea why you think you're disagreeing with me.
If their state constitutions allow that, then I don't question the constitutional legitimacy of those state laws.
However some states are attempting to change their position. Predictably, the fed is ignoring the states 10th Amendment prerogative to do so.
The fed needs an amendment to pass such laws for the states, as it did with alcohol. But that all changed with FDR's commerce clause. Not that you mind...
Backwards. State constitutions act to limit state powers.
You: "State constitutions act to limit state powers."
Reading comprehension problems, Roscoe?
So the honest thing for you to say would be "the 'pro-dope' contingent on FR are either zealots or are not honest about their agenda." Why did you exclude the former possibility?
Evidently; see post 107. Maybe Roscoe is an argue-bot?
The courts have also ruled again and again that the second ammendment does not apply to an individuals right to own firearms. Guess the gun grabbers aint violating any rights either?
So much for rights given to us by God, i guess their granted to us by the whims of politicians now.
More reductionism. Some zealots are knowingly dishonest.
"Elsewhere around the country, schools in Blackford County, Ind., test for tobacco use in...students who take driver's education or apply for parking permits."
Oh yeh, I sure wouldn't want to park next to someone who was high on Virginia Slims...
Well, here there may be a justification. If the driver/smoker is not a competent smoker, then they could be distracted by hanging ash or dropping their cigarette, and while distracted, plow madly through the parking lot...
(rolls eyes) I'm being kind in calling it a thought process...
Silence alone is sufficient.
Do you think all those opposed to affirmative action are racists?
It's the same with the WoD.
What does this mean?
Your equating "affirmative action" with restrictions on illicit drugs?
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