I work in an industry that has random drug testing mandated by law (trucking). It is intrusive, irritating, and humiliating to arrive at the terminal thinking your week's done -- only to be told to report to a collection center where you're instructed to empty pockets, handed a cup, and told to urinate in a toilet area that has no running water. Then you stand there while a tech pours your urine into two separate bottles, seals them with tape you're asked to initial, etc. after an hour or so, you go on your way until the next time that your number comes up on the random selection.

There's a lot of blind faith in this system. We're expected to believe that the chain-of-custody form guarantees that the specimen we render will be the one tested under our social security number at the lab. Probably will be, but how will we know? Lab results get crossed up in the medical labs...does it ever happen with the commercial drug testing labs? I dunno...neither does anyone else, I think.

I do know this: The perennial abusers are almost never caught. They know how to beat the system. Only casual users who've not bothered to do a crash course in test avoidance get positive results.

One other thing I know: I went into trucking knowing that this surrender of privacy was a price of entry into a trade that I really wanted to pursue. So, I gave consent. I've submitted to the dehumanizing process dozens of times, with no ill-effects other than loss of dignity -- of which I had none left after the army got through with me, anyway. In the public interest...safety-sensitive, yada yada yada. OK.

Now, about the school kids: I volunteered to be a truck driver, but the kids are required by law to go to school. If random testing is imposed, these kids are subjected to the same kind of dehumanizing treatment that I and my colleagues voluntarily agreed to undergo as a prerequisite for entering a trade. Is that quite fair?

Any time I go to a collection site, I wonder, does the technician have a friend who is hot and had to submit to a random, and does she want to switch samples? Would those little stick-on seals present much of an obstacle to a determined and intelligent person who planned to deceive? Now, no technician would be temped to protect a star athlete, or the child of a prominent community leader, would she?

If the school has a demonstrable problem with drug usage that interferes with its mission, maybe this initiative is justified. That will be for the community to determine. If it's just a matter of posturing as being "tough" by trampling the dignity of the kids underfoot, well, that's another thing.

Some battles are worth fighting, and some aren't. I do hope your school administration takes time to carefully consider this one. You have my best wishes.

The rights and privacy issues aside, as one who worked for the second largest employee screening/drug testing company in the US managing nationwide drug testing programs for large corporations for a number of years, I can tell you that a well designed, legally defensible drug testing program for the school district will be quite expensive!!

Is now the time to be finding new ways to spend money? Money, that they don't have.

Their bus drivers MUST be tested if they have a commercial driver license, it's a Department of Transportation requirement. So, the fact that they do that is not anything to brag about, it's required by DOT rule, 49 CFR Part 40.

Substance abuse testing for steroids and other "performance enhancing drugs" is even more expensive that your standard SAMHSA 5-panel drug screens.

And unless they require the use of a SAMHSA certified lab, the results are in question and hard to defend in court.

So, the whole rights issues aside, is this something that the school district can afford at a time when the state is already struggling to meet its financial obligations?

Why don't they test for malnutrition, diabetis, vison problems and learning disablities? Seems more people could be helped this way.

Do we want to make a lifelong criminal record for some dumb kid that smoked a marijauna cigerette?

If parents want to know if their child is on drugs they should pay for the test themselves.

Too true- a different set of rules for the rich kids. I've seen i thundreds of times.

I like your name, hadtosayit.

Way to go scar-strangled-banter! Drug testing the atheltes yeah right...They famous football coach tells the children when they are going to be drug tested and the children bring "ready clean" in mountian dew bottles to school! I agree with you scar..it's none of the schools business what the children do after school hours. This school system is a joke...they have different sets of rules depending on how much money the parents make or how good the child is in sports. They are not fair and if I had any other school to send my other children to I would.

Seriously? Random drug testing? Random? If a child is making good grades and staying out of trouble, it's none of the school's business how that student spends his or her free time. Teenagers smoke pot, ya know. This is nothing new.