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.
By using the adjective form of a noun, I introduce nothing new. It is clumsily dishonest of you to pretend otherwise.
and I responded to your use of the term.
You appear to have applied the term to anyone who opposes anti-drug laws; if so, this is considerably more than "responding to my use of the term."
Pretending that FR doesn't have "pro-dope" posters is
... not something I have done.
Perhaps the first time they make that pseudo-legal argument without any support. When they're still making the same unsupported claim a thousand posts later, it shows they don't care about the facts.
Invention.
His position is firmly grounded in the plain text of the Constitution; yours teeters atop the doubletalk of an FDR-cowed Supreme Court. (How you have the gall to present your position as conservative is beyond me.)
According to the federal Constitution, states can have that power.
However, you ignore the design of constitutions in our country. Your interpretation is akin to that of China, where subjects may only do what is specifically allowed, and governments can do anything not prohibited.
That is diametrically opposed to our form of government.
Your position is baseless.
My position is that laws contrary to the Constitution are null and void. Authorities have no legitimate power to act outside their legal mandate. The Constitution created their offices, and it defines and limits the powers of those offices.
No, it's creeping around in a penumbra with Roe V. Wade.
The federal Constitution was NOT a grant of power to the states.
it will be much easier to enforce tyranny when the data chips are installed.
Observation.
You're projecting; that hocus-pocus bears a striking resemblance to the expansion of the Interstate Commerce Clause to non-interstate commerce
As a result of smoking?
Once the testing starts, they can test for anything. The costs are in the handling and reporting of the samples, and the overhead costs of the labs. The tests themselves only cost a couple bucks a piece.
Observation.
Observation is necessary but not sufficient; I'm asking you for the criteria by which you evaluate your observations to distinguish a sincere opponent of anti-drug laws from a "pro-doper" with a hidden agenda.
That's real funny, considering it's the same lack of respect for the 10th Amendment that allows the WoD and Roe V Wade to stand.
Both are domains of the states.
Says who?
yeah but, tobacco is not a drug......but nicotine is (he he). Its just a LEGAL drug, even though it has lost in court as being harmful, etc.
But, you can tax it, so it is legal, albeit deadly.
the woders are crying because they are being forced to see that legality of a harmful substance is no different that the illegality of a benign one.
I know that. However you miss the point.
Even if the federal Constitution would allow the states to retain their powers to prohibit all that is not specifically permitted, free states do not function that way. China does.
Says who?
Raw data requires interpretation. Are you really too slow to understand that, or are you dishonestly pretending to be that slow?
Roe v. Wade invented a "Constitional right" to commit abortions out of thin air. The contention that there is a "Constitutional right" to manufacture, sell and use illicit drugs invents such a "right" out of smoke.
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