NORML | St. Petersburg Times
FLORIDA–It is time for the Hernando County School Board to refocus superintendent Wendy Tellone’s curious fixation on testing students for drugs.

In the past two years Tellone and her staff have brought three proposals to the board that would randomly select certain groups of students to submit urine samples, which then are tested for a variety of drugs, including alcohol. After initially opposing the recommendation because it is fundamentally unfair and oppressive, the board eventually authorized the administration to pursue a $418,000 federal grant that would pay for a drug counselor to oversee the program.

At first, Tellone wanted to test all high school and middle school students who participated in any extracurricular activity or drove a motor vehicle on campus. Now she has cast a slightly smaller net in her exploitative fishing expedition: All high school students who are athletes, cheerleaders or drive on campus.

This proposal is just as offensive and excessive as the earlier one, and it is time for the board to intervene by clearly defining how it wants to combat the problem of students who abuse drugs. The board must undertake this task because it is apparent that Tellone and her staff are determined to remain on a path of extremism that tramples students’ privacy and dignity.

The emphasis of any successful program should be on education and prevention, and then getting help for those who need it. Any available funding should be spent educating teachers how to recognize the kids who are under the influence and referring them for testing, counseling and discipline.

Singling out athletes, cheerleaders and people who drive cars is arbitrary and overly broad. It makes about as much sense as targeting members of the band or the drama club because of misplaced generalizations that musicians and actors are more likely to use drugs.

More fundamentally, drug testing presupposes guilt and forces the clear majority of students who are not abusing drugs to prove their innocence.

Remarkably, Tellone’s war on drugs extends beyond randomly collecting urine samples. She is considering spending $50,000 on a state-of-the-art “puffer” device that, like the security screening machine at airports that seeks out explosives, detects several varieties of narcotics. A school official uses a cloth to wipe lockers, car door handles or bookbags, for example, and then puts the cloth in the machine. In a test at Central High School earlier this year, the machine found trace amounts of marijuana, methamphetamine and heroin. Searches of the suspect vehicles and lockers turned up no drugs, however.

This proposal is folly. Its most useful purpose would be to keep school officials informed of which drugs are in vogue among students and teachers. Otherwise, all it proves is that someone who had come into contact with drugs also came into contact with an inanimate object on campus, where hundreds of other students and educators also had access.

When will the board acknowledge that this pharmaceutical witch hunt has gone too far?

It appears board member Jim Malcolm is the swing vote on this issue. He has historically opposed random drug testing, but his position has softened inasmuch that he agreed in the spring to allow Tellone to pursue the federal grant.

We urge Malcolm to revert to his previous stance and recognize that there are better ways to reach the goal of reducing drug abuse. He also might ponder how absolutely hypocritical it is to subject select students to random urine testing and surreptitious wipe-downs of their belongings, when neither board members, administrators, teachers nor clerical workers are asked to submit to the same demeaning, invasive practices.