Seems the drug testing and the rejection of the drug treatment center is reflective of County approach to drugs and might merit a comment from you. http://articles.lancasteronline.com/local/4/259733
Editor’s response: We have written on this a couple of times already. Although the Watchdog considers such invasions of student privacy counterproductive and potentially harmful for reasons set forth at http://proxychi.baremetal.com/csdp.org/publicservice/drugtest.pdf and posted below from www.drugwarfacts.org , the downside can be somewhat mitigated if findings are only shared with the youngster and his / her parents or guardian, and perceived as a common tendency of teenagers to experiment. For every marijuana user identified, there probably are thirty others in the class who will go unnoted and just a passing stage.
Furthermore, just as most adults indulge in alcholic beverages, so do others choose to smoke marijuana which is far less dangerous.
- (2003) “Drug testing of students is more prevalent in schools where drugs are used, kept or sold than in schools that are drug free. While only 23 percent of drug-free schools drug test students, 38 percent of non-drug-free schools conduct some type of drug testing.
“Drug testing is not associated with either significantly lower risk scores or lower estimates of student body drug use. The average risk score of teens attending a school that is not drug free but has drug testing is 1.69; the average risk score of students at non-drug-free schools without drug testing is 1.50. The estimate of students using illegal drugs averages 40 percent for non-drug-free schools with testing and 34 percent at non-drug-free schools without testing.”
Source:
QEV Analytics, “National Survey of American Attitudes on Substance Abuse VIII: Teens and Parents” (New York, NY: National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, August 2003), pp. 20-21.
http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/000…
Adolescents – Drug Testing
“Drug testing of any kind, including for cause or suspicion, was not a significant predictor of marijuana use. These results remained for all samples, even after controlling for student demographic characteristics.”
Source:
Yamaguchi, Ryoko, Lloyd D. Johnston & Patrick M. O’Malley, “Relationship Between Student Illicit Drug Use and School Drug-Testing Policies,” Journal of School Health, April 2003, Vol. 73, No. 4, p. 163.
http://www.monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/text/ryldjpom03.pdf
