Schools and Drug Testing

I was once "thanked and dismissed" from jury consideration because I'm former military, had kicked people out of the army for drug use, and have a friend who's a cop. I'm not a fan of drug use at all, and no, I don't accept the libertarian "it's my body" argument. I do, however, think that marijuana should be legalized, and no, I don't smoke it.

So you know where I stand on drugs.

In Tennessee, student athletes can be tested for drug use--I'll ignore, for the moment, why only athletes are tested and not others who represent the school--but recently the state attorney general opined that testing random athletes violates state law. Specifically, he said, state law requires that there be a reasonable suspicion of drug use before students can be tested.

The opinion doesn't bar schools from drug testing, but it could leave them open to court challenges, said Rich Haglund, legal counsel for the state board of education.

So what are some schools doing? They're testing their students anyway.

You can hear the leftie cries of "it's to protect the children!" all the way out here on the Left Coast. Apparently, "protecting the children" is far more important than a) following the law, and b) the constitutional rights of those children.

Yes, I know that children have fewer rights than do adults, and even support the reasoning behind that fact. However, I don't see that reasoning as supporting random drug testing. Even children should be presumed innocent of crimes before there's adequate reason to believe they're not, and the fishing expedition that is random drug testing assumes just the opposite.

Random drug testing is right up there with the Transportation Security Administration (the federal idiots at the airport)--window dressing so some politician somewhere can say he or she is "doing something" about a problem, but that actually accomplishes next to nothing.

What should we do about kids' taking drugs? I don't have a complete answer to that yet. But I know the solution does not include having random students, or even random athletes, pee in a bottle.

And schools that continue to do this now that they've been told that the top law enforcement officer in the state thinks it's illegal? They deserve to get hit with the lawsuits that will come--just like my school district deserves to get hit with the lawsuits that will eventually come from the charging of illegal fees.

I can forgive breaking a law inadvertently. I can't forgive a government entity knowingly and willfully violating the law.