JULY 10, 2002
Door open for
drug testing students
By Dick Morris
President
Bush didn't do it. House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and
Senate
Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) didn't do it. No Republican
think tank
did it. But five old judges on the U.S. Supreme Court have
raised the issue
that could - and should - generate a political comeback
for the Republican
Party - drug testing.
By a 5-4 vote on June 27, the court approved a
broad program to drug test
all students who participate in any high school
extracurricular activity.
Speaking for four of the justices in the majority,
Clarence Thomas
advocated a broad authority to test any student for drugs
for any reason
basing his view on the in loco parentis power of the school
to act in the
place of the parent as the child's daytime custodian. Justice
Steven
Breyer, displaying the judicial independence that is increasingly
earning
him respect, reasoned that it was acceptable to require drug testing
as
long as a student could opt out by declining participation in
after-school
activities.
Recent national polls confirm that 72
percent of voters support "requiring
all high school students whose parents
consent to take drug tests" with 52
percent strongly supporting the
proposal. (Asked if they would back
mandatory drug testing with or without
parental consent, only 40 percent
approved.)
Drugs are a huge problem
that has disappeared from the national political
agenda. But asked to rate
the seriousness of the problem, 75 percent of
those polled rated it very or
somewhat serious, tied with the possibility
of another terrorist attack in
the United States and ahead of the ratings
for the cost of prescription
drugs (63 percent), the future of Social
Security (68 percent), the health
of the American economy (61 percent), sex
and violence on television (59
percent), and the level of federal taxes (44
percent).
If the court
held that the school's power as custodian justified testing,
clearly it
would uphold the policy if parental consent were actually
required.
Presumably, even Justice Breyer would approve if parents had the
right to
opt out.
The issue of school drug testing would put a key morality/crime
issue back
on the national agenda, a focus that has been sorely lacking
since a
combination of the Republicans' prison and sentencing programs and
the
Democrats' gun controls and extra police started the free fall reduction
in
the national crime rate. The absence of such an issue haunts Republican
prospects in future elections.
By stressing parental approval in drug
testing, the legislation offers not
to override family protections, but to
reinforce them, making the school an
arm of a parent's decisions about his
or her children. Where parents are
not available or do not have custody, a
court would, presumably, exercise
this power under new
legislation.
Why hasn't the GOP leadership latched onto this issue? Who
knows? But now
that it is staring them in the face, perhaps they will wake
up to its
enormous political potential.
Most liberals can be counted
on to oppose drug testing as intrusive and
unconstitutional. But the recent
Supreme Court decision cuts the ground out
from under their advocacy. The
left would be in the position of approving
the ongoing expenditure of vast
sums of money and risk to large numbers of
federal agents to combat the flow
of drugs while saying that the issue
wasn't important enough to require a
simple, noninvasive test of students.
President Bush has carved out an
important national constituency for
testing students based on the desire to
help those who need remedial aid.
But can a child learn while on drugs?
Shouldn't we find out who is flirting
with this menace early enough to do
something about it?
Republican drug-testing legislation must also include
treatment programs
for those found to be drug users and should also provide
for alternate
residential facilities for those who are habitual users. The
rotten apple
theory holds especially true where the epidemic of drug use
among our
children is concerned.
The Republicans should use the
remaining weeks of the session to force a
floor vote in each house on the
issue of parentally approved drug testing.
It will provide the kind of wedge
issue in the fall campaigns that the
party desperately needs. And it will do
very important things to help the
millions of kids who are taking drugs and
risking a lifetime of
debilitating dependence.
Dick Morris is a
former consultant to President Clinton, Sen. Trent Lott
(R-Miss.) and other
political figures. His new book, Power Plays: Win or
Lose, is published by
Harper Collins.