Pubdate: Thu, 17 Mar 2005
Source: Athens News, The (OH)
Copyright: 2005, Athens News
Contact:  http://www.athensnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1603
Author: Walter F. Wouk
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/testing.htm (Drug Test)

DRUGGED-DRIVING LAW A DIRECT ASSAULT ON OUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS, PROTECTIONS

Steven Mett's smug defense of Ohio's drugged-driving law, "Critic of 
Drugged-Driving Law Forgets That Smoking Pot Remains Illegal,"(Athens NEWS, 
March 10) neglects the fact that mandatory drug testing is a direct attack 
on the Bill of Rights.

The right to be left alone is, in the words of the late Supreme Court 
Justice Louis Brandeis, "the most comprehensive of rights and the right 
most valued by civilized men." The right to privacy is an implicit 
guarantee of the Constitution; yet it's the right most often ignored by 
government officials.

Drug testing presumably innocent individuals as a condition of operating a 
motor vehicle is a repudiation of everything America stands for. Drug 
testing reverses the presumption of innocence upon which much of our legal 
system is built.

The Fourth Amendment protects the right of the people to be secure in their 
persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and 
seizures. Many courts have ruled that to require a urine sample to be 
analyzed is a search under the Fourth Amendment.

What good is the Bill of Rights when "we the people" are forced to waive 
our constitutional right to privacy, one piss test at a time.

There is no place in this country for mandatory drug testing -- it is 
fundamentally anti-American.

Walter F. Wouk, director

The Thomas Paine Project

Cobleskill, N.Y. 
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MAP posted-by: Beth