Is drug testing middle school children an unnecessary form of safety or is it an actual way to keep schools free of bad influences?
That was the discussion that two attorneys had while coming on “Fox & Friends” on Saturday. Their discussion arose within reports that a Texas school district would initiate testing kids as early as 12 if they wanted to take part in extracurricular activities.
The regulation, which also applied to school children parking in the school’s parking lot, could discourage students from taking part in any of those events, lawyer Jonna Spilbor worried.
“Why do we want to turn our school administrators into probation officers?” Spilbor questioned. “What we call these are suspicion less searches — when there’s no relationship between the kid’s actual conduct and random drug testing, why do we want to do it? It nearly turns the school into a prison.”
David G. Evans, originator of the Drug Free Schools Coalition, argued not only that the Supreme Court ruled in favor of school drug testing, but also that testing truly increases involvement in supplementary activities.
“There is no decline in supplementary activities. There is a study that shows that really extracurricular activities go up because most kids in high school don’t use drugs and so they’re going to take part,” he said.
He added that the drug testing rule provided students a reason to refuse their peers’ offers to do drugs. “They can be on the football team — somebody offers them a drug — they can say, ‘Hey, I’m going to be tested.'”
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Spilbor countered by arguing that just because drug testing was permissible, that didn’t mean schools had to involve in that practice. “Yes you stand in the shoes of parents when you’re a school official. You do not stand in the shoes of the police department officers,” she added.
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