Drug Testing Encourages Cocaine, Heroin, and Meth Use
Anti-drug activist Debbie Fowler became a vocal supporter of student drug testing after her son Adam died from a heroin overdose:
Just a few weeks ago, Fowler testified at a congressional hearing for the Office of National Drug Control policy.
"I speak for them ... for funding of the president funding student drug testing programs," Fowler said. "I've done quite a few things for them." [Tribune-Democrat]
Certainly, Debbie Fowler would have liked to know about her son's heroin use before it took his life. Her motivations are very easy to understand. Unfortunately, she appears not to realize that drug testing encourages the use of the most dangerous drugs.
Schools rely almost exclusively on cheap urine tests, which can only detect cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine within a couple days of ingestion. Students know they can use these drugs on a Friday evening and test clean on Monday, so a random testing program is not effective at curbing use of these drugs. Unfortunately, the effect is sometimes quite the opposite.
Marijuana, the most widely used illicit drug, remains detectable for up to a month. Thus the proliferation of random student drug testing necessarily creates awareness among young people about which drugs are "safe" if you're worried about being tested. The switch from marijuana to stronger less-detectable drugs is a very real consequence of student drug testing, which has yet to be acknowledged by drug testing proponents.
I know that this problem is real because I've seen it first hand. In high school, I witnessed classmates asking around for drugs other than marijuana, precisely because they were being tested. Alcohol was the most popular marijuana substitute, but others surfaced as well. "You'll pass your drug test," became a selling point for substances other than marijuana.
This is just the truth about drug testing and how it effects the decisions young people make. Feel free to ignore me, or dismiss my judgments as the prejudiced fulminations of a pro-drug zealot. But drug testing, for very simple scientific reasons, has become a gateway to experimentation with more dangerous, less-detectible drugs. If anyone in the drug prevention community is wondering why student drug testing programs keep being proven not to reduce youth drug use, maybe you'll start thinking about these sorts of things.
Third Annual Portland Hempstalk
Come to the 3rd Annual Portland Hempstalk! We have two days to celebrate nature's most perfect plant, cannabis hemp. This event is to protest the failed policy of marijuana prohibition that denies medicine to the sick and disabled, takes jobs from our farmers and industries, keeps deserving students out of college, imprisons peaceful responsible people, tears apart families, creates violent criminal gangs, diverts tax money into an underground black market, and threatens our environment.
If Medical Marijuana Patients Don't Exist, How Come They Keep Sending Us Letters?
Our Executive Director David Borden and NORML's Senior Policy Analyst Paul Armentano have coauthored an updated version of Dave's DWC editorial, "Why Do People the Government Says Don't Exist Keep Writing Me?"
Check it out over at Huffington Post. It's quite good.
You know, it's funny how drug policy reformers keep getting accused of exploiting sick people in the medical marijuana debate, yet when patients write to us, it is always to thank us for our efforts. Somehow I doubt the Office of National Drug Control Policy gets many letters from medical marijuana users thanking them for opposing the evil marijuana lobby that tries to exploit them by making their medicine legal.
Tee'd Off in Taos - LEAP's Golf Tournament
âTeeâd Off in Taosâ isnât the signer of a letter to Dear Abby. Itâs a way you can support Law Enforcement Against Prohibitionâs mission of reducing the crime and violence associated with the War on Drugs by ending prohibition.
Politicians to be Drug Tested?
I have a simple question based on the fact that Alberto Gonzalez could hardly remember anything during his testimony:
Shouldn't we demand that all persons who want to work in the public sector be tested for drug use on a mandatory and possibly regular basis? Of course it's demeaning and embarassing to be drug tested. These public officials need to be tested like the rest of us are especially because they have so many responsibilities. Maybe then this absurd testing of most job applicants in the private sector and even people who have pain problems (such as myself, yes I'm tested for drugs at a pain clinic simply because I have a major pain syndrome!) won't be required to be tested...eventually. I can understand that SOME job applicants need to be tested, such as those who want to perform transportation duties or skills that are physically dangerous, but this drug testing problem has really gotten out of hand.
Supporting One Lost War is Not Enough for John McCain
Note: DRCNet does not take a position on the war in Iraq. I do.
Arizona Senator John McCain, one of the leading contenders for the Republican presidential nomination, has suffered mightily for his continuing support of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. That stance, I predict, will be a major contributor to his eventual failure to win the nomination.
But over the weekend, McCain embraced yet another loser of a war--the war on drugs. Here's how the Associated Press reported his remarks in Iowa Sunday:
Republican presidential hopeful John McCain on Sunday said the U.S. should step up its war on drugs as part of efforts to secure the country's borders. He said that's because Americans are to blame for "creating the demand" for illegal drugs that come into the country and give too much power to drug cartels that terrorize border areas. "We are creating the demand. We are creating the demand for these drugs coming across our border, which maybe means that we should go back more trying to make some progress and in telling Americans, particularly young Americans, that the use of drugs is a terrible thing for them to do," he said. The Arizona senator spoke during an appearance at a central Iowa farm where he devoted much of the conversation with a few dozen supporters to foreign relations and immigration.Does John McCain really believe all our war on drugs needs is a little more effort (and, of course, a little more funding)? Does he think we (read: law enforcement) haven't been trying? I don't think so. McCain is from a border state; he should know better. While McCain spoke about demand reduction, it is unclear exactly what he means. If he's talking about prevention education, that's not a bad thing. But if he's talking about reducing demand by increasing already draconian penalties for drug offenders that's an entirely different matter. McCain's campaign web site does not mention drug policy, but he has consistently favored a tough law enforcement approach to the problem. This year, he wrapped his remarks about ramping up the war on drugs in the broader context of border security. But if McCain is concerned about the impact of the cross-national black market drug trade on border security, there is a real solution: end drug prohibition, regulate the cross-border drug trade like other commodities are regulated, and cut the legs out from under the violent cartels who grow more wealthy and powerful every day under prohibition. Instead, McCain, who made his political career on one lost war in Southeast Asia and stands to end it by supporting another one in the Middle East, embraces yet another lost war in a cheap bid to gain support. Let's hope appealing for an ever-expanding, ever-deepening war on drugs is an issue whose time, like McCain's, has come and gone.