Today’s New York Times features a thought-provoking article by David Kocieniewski that takes a look at the practice of randomly screening middle and high school students for drug and alcohol use:

Is This the Answer to Drug Use?

KRISTIN SOMERS was sitting in her 10th-grade English class at Hackettstown High last year when a call came over the intercom telling her to report to the office. Immediately.

An honors student with a 3.8 average here in northwestern New Jersey, she wasn’t being summoned to discuss her academic performance. And while she participates in an array of after-school organizations — from soccer and softball to the National Honor Society and Key Club — the issue wasn’t her extracurricular activities or future plans.

She was instructed, instead, to go to the nurse’s office, where she was led into a bathroom and told to urinate into a plastic cup so officials could test for recent illicit drug use.

“It was a little odd,� said Kristin, now 17, who blushed as she recounted the story. “But it was over pretty quick. And I was back in class in, like, 10 minutes.�

For middle and high school students in about 1,000 districts across the country, including about two dozen in New Jersey, random drug tests have become routine, like pop quizzes for a student’s body. The increase in screening began after the United States Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that schools could test students participating in extracurricular activities. Students are screened for marijuana, cocaine, amphetamines and an assortment of other narcotics, and a growing number of districts are now looking to use urine tests to determine whether students have drunk alcohol, including outside school.

If they have, parents are notified and students are barred from school activities until they receive counseling. Test results are confidential and are not included on disciplinary records. [full text]

The article goes on to raise significant questions about how appropriate and effective these random drug tests are:

[D]espite the steady increase in random testing, recent studies have raised doubts about whether it actually works. Several teachers’ unions and organizations and medical groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics oppose random tests, saying they undermine the trust between students and school officials without offering help to those most at risk. And some parents view them as a blatant invasion of privacy because they measure drug use, and in some cases, alcohol use, that took place days earlier. Some drug tests can measure drug use that took place months earlier….

[C]ivil liberties advocates say schools have no business trying to usurp a parent’s right to regulate behavior outside school.

“The desire to protect students from the dangers of alcohol or other drugs is understandable,� said Ed Barocas, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey. “But sometimes this concern takes on a zeal that ignores other legitimate concerns, such as whether it intrudes on family privacy.�

William Sciambi, who successfully organized the fight to prevent the Delaware Valley School District in Hunterdon County, N.J., from beginning a testing program, said he was offended by the prospect of school officials usurping his responsibility to monitor his children’s behavior. Mr. Sciambi said he talks openly with his children about drug and alcohol use in hopes of teaching them to make responsible choices….

For all the effort and the $1.7 million in federal financing for the programs, it is unclear whether they actually dissuade students from drinking and taking drugs. In surveys, administrators say the programs are working. In most districts only about 1 percent of all tests find evidence of drugs or alcohol, and schools argue that the low rate proves the tests are a deterrent.

But the largest study, by the University of Michigan in 2003, found no evidence that testing lowered the abuse rate. The federally financed study examined 90,000 students at 900 schools nationwide and found virtually identical rates in schools that tested and those that did not.

The Drug Policy Alliance, which lobbies for less punitive narcotics laws, has tried to persuade school administrators to adopt other strategies, like counseling and drug education.

“Those are the kids who need help, who need to be brought into the school community, and they’re being punished and pushed aside,� said Jennifer Kern, a research associate for the Drug Policy Alliance. [full text]