Pubdate: Fri, 11 Oct 2002
Source: Macon Telegraph (GA)
Copyright: 2002 The Macon Telegraph Publishing Company
Contact:  http://www.macontelegraph.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/667
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/testing.htm (Drug Testing)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth)

SCHOOL TOBACCO TESTS OUTRAGEOUS

For those who encounter teen-agers everyday, America's educators often seem 
to have no idea how to deal with them.

Since way before Nancy Reagan started urging young people to "just say no," 
teen-age rebellion at its simplest can be boiled down to one simple truth: 
The more you preach to kids not to do something, the more they're going to 
at least want to give it a try.

When it comes to the problem of tobacco use, however, some educators have 
either forgotten this lesson or never learned it in the first place. In 
school districts around Birmingham, Ala., in Blackford, Ind., even in 
Decatur, Ga., schools have begun random testing of students to detect 
tobacco use.

Beyond the total lack of respect for teen-agers' rights as individuals, 
this action makes us wonder if we somehow missed an alarming increase in 
tobacco use among teens. Not at all.

The University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research conducts an 
annual Monitoring the Future study of about 45,000 students from more than 
400 schools nationwide. The survey found that, in 2000, 15 percent of 
eighth-graders, 24 percent of 10th-graders and 31 percent of 12th-graders 
reported smoking at least one cigarette in the past 30 days.

As troubling as these numbers are, they are a healthy decline from the mid 
1990s: In 1996, 21 percent of eighth-graders, 30.4 percent of 10th-graders 
and 36.5 percent of 12th-graders admitted to what the study calls "current 
smoking."

What does this show? Students have been getting good advice about the 
dangers of smoking, either from their parents, peers or teachers, and are 
able to act on it. Testing for tobacco only undermines any trust that has 
been built between teens and the people who influence them most, while 
tearing down their often fragile self-esteem.

Shawn Heller, executive director of Students for Sensible Drug Policy in 
Washington, said of the testing: "We're making schools like prisons." Well, 
not quite. Even prisoners are not subjected to such draconian measures.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom