Drug Czar Applauds Funding of Student Random Testing Programs
by Jim Brown
October 26, 2005
(AgapePress) - The White House is expanding the implementation of random student drug testing programs in U.S. schools, and the nation's "drug czar" feels it is a positive step towards protecting young people. The Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) and the U.S. Education Department have announced that more than $7 million in federal grants have been awarded to more than 350 schools nationwide to prevent teen drug use.
ONDCP Director John Walters says random drug testing has had "enormously powerful preventive effects" in the military, private sector employment, and the transportation safety industry. He believes it will prove to be of similar value in school settings.
"A key obstacle has been the view that [drug testing] is going to be used to punish young people," Walters says. However, he notes to the contrary that "by law established and confirmed by the Supreme Court, random testing must be confidential and must be used to refer those who may be found to be using to intervention, education and, if necessary, to treatment."
The U.S. drug czar says random drug testing gives young people permission to do what he believes most of them, overwhelmingly, want to do -- that is, not to use drugs. It is a support, not a substitute, he contends, for what parents, schools, and community leaders are trying to do to protect young people.
The random drug testing "is confidential, it works with parents, and it stops the progress of use that leads to addiction and dependency," the cabinet official says. "Drug use is a disease that's spread not by a virus or a bacterium but by behavior, and it starts with our teens. If we stop that spread at a greater rate, we change the face of substance abuse in the United States for generations to come," he asserts.
"We have it within our power to apply tools that are now known and proven in a way that will have a profound effect on the future of substance abuse and make the suffering from it much less," Walters adds.
The ONDCP was established in 1988 by the Anti-Drug Abuse Act. The federal grants to implement the new drug testing programs were handed out less than two years after President George W. Bush used his State of the Union Address to call for random student drug testing in schools.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
