PLACERVILLE, Calif. (CBS13)--Parents of Placer County students can now buy discounted drug tests from high schools, a tactic that county officials hope will help cut down on what appears to be a rising drug use rate.
The inventive anti-drug campaign comes on the heels of a recent survey from a Placer County high school that found “half of the students” use marijuana.
The Placer County Sheriff’s Department is making the $40 drug tests available for just $10 for parents in response to concerns over drugs in schools. The 10-panel urine test checks for methamphetamines, cocaine, marijuana, ecstasy and other drugs, officials said.
Two points:
1. Placerville is in El Dorado County (which also borders Sacramento County). So does this program exist in Placer County or El Dorado County?
2. Who's eating that $30 difference between the $40 cost of the test and the $10 price to parents? If it's the taxpayers of the county, that's ridiculous. A parent who suspects their kid is using drugs shouldn't expect their neighbors to help fund the test to find out.
First, if your kid is smoking pot and you don't know it, you're either a) an idiot or b) not around long enough to administer a drug test, anyway.. The other drugs are harder to tell, but it's impossible to smoke marijuana on anything resembling a regular basis without reeking of it. The other drugs are more difficult to tell, but it's basically as simple as looking for odd sleep patterns and strangely dilated or undilated pupils.
ReplyDeleteAs for the $30 difference . . . I would not be surprised to find tht $40 is a greatly inflated retail price, and/or tht the company is offering them at a discount to the schools as a form of advertising. I don't know that to be true, but I find it more reasonable than a school board allocating funds for non school mandated testing.
I didn't think it the school board, I thought it the sheriff's department that might be eating that cost difference.
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