Pubdate: Fri, 31 Mar 2006
Source: Appalachian News-Express (KY)
Copyright: 2006 Appalachian News-Express
Contact:  http://www.news-expressky.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1450
Author: Mary Music, Staff Writer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/testing.htm (Drug Test)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth)

MORE KIDS TO BE DRUG TESTED

More Pike County students will be randomly drug tested next year - and
they could be tested more often.

Until this week, a maximum of 20 percent of students could be drug
tested in Pike County schools. Tuesday, Pike County Board of Education
members changed the policy to a minimum of 20 percent.

Eugene Sisco, with ASAP Consulting, asked the board to make the change
in order to "broaden the pool" of students who can be tested and allow
the district to maintain a grant that pays for the program. Sisco said
he expects to complete a full analysis of this year's testing results
within a couple of weeks.

This year, Sisco said they should test at least 4,000 students.
One-third of the students who need to be tested in order to fulfill
the grant agreement have already been tested. Sisco, who told board
members his company has expended half of the money appropriated for
the program, said they have enough supplies to complete testing for
another one-third of the student body by October. In Sept., he said,
the company should meet its goal.

Sisco estimated that at the end of the three year grant cycle that 65
percent of Pike County students should be tested for drug use. This
year, he said, three students tested positive, compared to at least
eight students who tested positive last year.

In a survey, 49 percents of students said that they or their friends
have cut down on their use of drugs because of the drug testing
policy. Sisco said 62 percent of students also claimed they will cut
down or stop their drug use if the company is allowed to test in
schools several times a year.

"To me, that says it's working," Sisco told the board.

The University of Michigan's "Monitoring the Future" program, which
annually surveys 50,000 eighth, tenth and twelfth grade students in
400 public and private schools about drug use, reported in 2003 that
student drug testing, whether random or otherwise, was not effective
in reducing the amount of drug use in American middle schools and high
schools.

The report, which was forwarded to the Journal of School Health, found
"virtually identical" rates of drug use in schools with mandated
tested and schools that did not implement drug testing policies. A
press release issued by the college regarding the report said 36
percent of twelfth grade students in non-drug testing schools claimed
to have used marijuana at least 12 months prior to the day they took
the survey. In comparison, 37 percent of students in schools where
drug testing was mandated, claimed to have used marijuana 12 months
prior to the day they took the survey.

After this report was released, surveys from another 169 schools --a
total of 891 middle schools and high schools in the country--were
included and analyzed with a focus on random drug testing. At the
time, only 7 of the 891 schools analyzed had policies for random drug
testing in place. This study also showed that there was "virtually no
difference" between schools that tested and those that didn't test
their students.

A follow-up to that study has not been released, but the college said
in its annual report for 2005 that the number of students who claim to
have taken illicit drugs 12 months prior to the survey was down more
than a third for eighth graders, a quarter for tenth graders, and ten
percent for twelfth graders.

Additionally, the report indicated that many classes of drugs showed
little or no systematic change in 2005 in terms of student abuse, even
though many of the drug classes are below their "peak level of use."

The only drugs that appeared to have a pattern of "modest" increase in
2005 were sedatives, Oxycontin, inhalants, the report said.

The survey and other related material is available online at
www.monitoringthefuture.org.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Derek