While the Office of National Drug Control Policy is relentless in its push for random student drug testing, the Drug Policy Alliance has been equally vigilant with efforts to educate school officials, parents and the public that these surveillance programs in schools can do more harm than good.  In the past month DPA organized opposition at the Honolulu Student Drug Testing Summit and gave a presentation about the dangers of random student drug testing at the National Association of School Psychologists' Convention in New York.

On March 27, 2007, DPA board member Pam Lichty led the opposition effort at the Honolulu Student Drug Testing Summit along with staff from the Drug Policy Forum of Hawai'i and the ACLU of Hawai'i.  Lichty noted the slickness of the tightly choreographed dog and pony show, and the ONDCP's attempts to control information questioning the strategy.  She said, "As in the other cities, the 'Non-ONDCP Materials' table was placed literally out of sight behind a trellis. Although we moved it to a slightly more prominent position, it was clear that they wanted us invisible."

However, opponents were able to provide educators with the information distinctly absent from the summit, giving out scores of pamphlets and position papers making the case against student drug testing. Two local television stations featured stories with Pam Lichty outlining the harms of testing.

The summit started with Hawaii's Lieutenant Governor, James "Duke" Aiona, Jr., an avid promoter of student drug testing, greeting the group of around seventy-five educators. The ONDCP then launched into their pitch for random testing, though they softened the intensity compared to past summits, perhaps in an attempt to make the policy more palatable to educators.  In her opening remarks, Bertha Madras, the ONDCP's leading spokesperson on the issue, backed away from Drug Czar John Walters' description of the strategy as a "silver bullet," instead describing drug testing as just one prevention tool available to educators. The summit included the usual sessions about federal funding and drug testing technology, which downplayed the costs of testing and exaggerated reliability. Perhaps most offensive of all, New Jersey school principal Chris Steffner dismissed the well-reasoned opposition of the American Academy of Pediatrics by saying the doctors just wanted the students to come to their office for testing so they could pocket the fees.

Two days after the summit, Jennifer Kern, coordinator of DPA's Student Drug Testing Fails campaign, presented at a Special Session of the National Association of School Psychologists' Convention in New York City.  School Psychologists from around the country eagerly picked up DPA booklets Making Sense of Student Drug Testing: Why Educators Are Saying No, Beyond Zero Tolerance, and Safety First. School psychologists agreed that scarce resources should be spent eliminating, rather than creating, sources of alienation and conflict between young people, their parents and schools.

The ONDCP will hold the final student drug testing summit of 2007 in Las Vegas on April 24, and DPA will be there to confront the Drug Czar head-on, present a principled opposition to the ONDCP's drug testing push, and stimulate informed discussion and debate nationwide on this important issue.

DPA is also mounting opposition to student drug testing in the courts, representing the Washington Education Association in a case before the Washington State Supreme Court in which students and parents are challenging a school district's random drug testing policy.