The Tennessee Legislature – the political equivalent of The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight – has done it again.
This time, it’s in playing the role that it seems to relish most – Big Brother – as its members ignore the advice of Tennessee’s Attorney General, the state’s highest legal authority, so it can once again inject its values into the lives of Tennesseeans, this time with permission to drug tests athletes, band members, cheerleaders, and others in extracurricular activities.
The fact that there’s no evidence that such testing accomplishes anything is of little interest to state legislators, which seems now willing to use students as pawns in their political gamesmanship. Like guns in bars and parks, it’s a solution looking for a problem. After all, there is no epidemic of teenage drug use. In fact, it’s not only continuing to go down or is stable, but student perceptions about drugs are going in the right direction.
According to the National Institute on Drug Use said: “Attitudes toward substance abuse, often seen as harbingers of change in use, showed many favorable changes. Among 12th-graders, perceived harmfulness of LSD, amphetamines, sedatives/barbiturates, heroin, and cocaine increased. Across the three grades (8th, 10th, and 12th), perceived availability of several drugs also decreased.”
Drugged Out County Students
The single-minded attitude about testing as many students as possible is quite a revelation. Who knew that there are so many drugged-out students in all of these extracurricular activities in our schools?
Although common sense would suggest that students who get involved in extracurricular activities have lower risk for drug use, more to the point, there is no reliable research that indicates that drug testing produces any discernible impact on drug use in adolescents.
The second revelation to us is that these Tennessee students are apparently so out of control that their parents welcome the usurping of their responsibilities. Or at least that’s what some legislators suggest. And what would legislators suggest school districts do to parents who believe that they should be in charge of their children and refuse to allow it?
Eroding Privacy
Maybe so, but it’s hard to believe that parents welcome suspicionless drug testing of their children when there’s no cause or behavior to suggest drug use. While we admit that we’re strict constructionists when it comes to civil liberties, we also think that as parents, it’s our job to teach our children that their privacy matters and that the nibbling away of our basic freedoms shouldn’t be accepted quietly.
That’s one of the most interesting developments when these so-called small government conservatives gain power. Despite complaints about liberals injecting big government into the private lives of Americans, as soon as these moralistic conservatives take charge, they use government to intrude into the hearts of families in support of their own beliefs.
Time after time, particularly as they invoke bogey men like drug use and crime, they claim that they are right. And they are. Far right. And in decamping out in the fringes, they corrupt the kind of traditional conservatism that has been such a strong and important influence in political thought in the history of the U.S.
Moralism As Method
The Republican-controlled Legislature has shown an unerring tendency to advancing this kind of narrow agenda.
But political differences aside, how about the recommendations of experts like the American Academy of Pediatrics, whose official position is in opposition to involuntary drug testing.
As these children’s experts say, there needs to be more research on the safety and efficacy of school-based testing, and there’s the need for attention to early rehabilitation rather than punitive measures in districts that are drug testing students. Acknowledging that proponents can point to no independent research that drug testing helps adolescents refuse drugs, the Academy of Pediatrics concludes that drug testing poses significant risks that outweigh any limited benefits.
For example, there’s the potential for damaging the school-child and school-family relationships, and “regardless of the reason it was performed, drug testing was not significantly associated with reduction in the use of marijuana or any illicit drug among students,” the Academy said.
Flunking the Test
In addition, the Academy questioned the reliability of the testing. For example, to ensure the validity of the specimen for testing, an adult at the school needs to watch a student urinate or the collector must use an expensive federally approved protocol for ensuring the chain of custody.
If the school is using hair or saliva testing, there are questions about their validity. Hair testing tells more about historical drug use than current use, and although saliva testing is more accurate, it doesn’t perform consistently across all drugs.
Then, according to the Academy, there is the problem of false positives, especially when screening for amphetamines or opiates, that can be caused by cold medicine and food. More to the point, it’s “fairly easy to defeat drug tests and most drug-involved youth are too familiar with ways to do so.”
Except for marijuana, information is limited and the drug use has to be within the previous 72 hours, and standard tests do not detect many of the favorite drugs of adolescents, such as alcohol, ecstacy and inhalants.
Alcoholics Unanimous
As the doctors point out, drug testing may inadvertently drive more students to use the most popular drug of choice in high schools – alcohol. Alcohol is associated with more adolescent deaths any illegal drug but isn’t included in most standard tests. Also, drug testing may drive adolescents to shift from drugs with low mortality rates – like marijuana – to those representing higher danger, such as inhalants.
But, worst of all, the entire environment for the testing is punitive, and the lack of adequate adolescent drug treatment and mental health treatment remains. In the end, drug testing encourages alcohol use, foments the rebellious streak that is a biological part of adolescence and discourages wider participation in extracurricular activity.
And most of all, if all this is such a good idea, we think the legislators should set a good example. Take the drug tests themselves.
Depends on what drugs the power structure has historically used.
Don’t you know the game?
The ruling thug group makes rules and uses violence if necessary to extract tribute (taxes) from the peasants under its control. The court thugs don’t want the peasants goofing off trying to be mystical or anything; they want them working their asses off to pay maximum tribute so the ruling thugs can buy votes enough to stay in power.
Once the Prohibition bureaucracy was in place for alcohol, when Prohibition ended, it found some new demons in the drugs not popular with the white power structure and persecuted the minorities that favored those.
To people who say it’s just nanny-state protective concern for “our” children, I say, OK, I’m an adult, may I please be allowed to smoke a reefer in my own home, to which they hem and haw and say NO! So it’s clear what fascist pigs they truly are.
Republicans say that left wing Democrats are fascists. Democrats say that right wing Republicans are fascists. Both are correct. It’s about a desire to impose one’s extreme views of order on everyone else. But I don’t recall our Tennessee Democrats and Republicans ever being left or right wing until now. I fear they’re coming for me next.
” Like guns in bars and parks, it’s a solution looking for a problem. After all, there is no epidemic of teenage drug use. In fact, it’s not only continuing to go down or is stable, but student perceptions about drugs are going in the right direction.
The second revelation to us is that these Tennessee students are apparently so out of control that their parents welcome the usurping of their responsibilities. Or at least that’s what some legislators suggest. And what would legislators suggest school districts do to parents who believe that they should be in charge of their children and refuse to allow it?
Time after time, particularly as they invoke bogey men like drug use and crime, they claim that they are right.”
All I could think was, this person has never been to Memphis TN and doesn’t live there for sure.
It could be used to get kids out of houses where the parents are doing drugs and the kids don’t get a choice.
HOWEVER, too often it’s used to fill prisons, and we have privatized prisons who like to be full. Do they have lobbyists?
You nailed it about the lack of treatment. I wonder if we have any here, or, do we just put them right back into the fire.