Dog gone? Random drug searches may be outlawed

The state Assembly Education Committee voted 7-2 on June 21 to approve Senate Bill 1386, which next faces a vote of the House.

The bill, authored by Sen. John Vasconcellos, D-San Jose, would also forbid schools from testing for drug or alcohol use without a reasonable suspicion that a student has illegally used a controlled substance.

Sen. Sam Aanestad, R-Grass Valley, was one of the conservatives to cross party lines and support the bill. He said he is happy to vote in favor of the proposed bill. “We need to define what reasonable suspicion is and allow parents to have control,” he said.

The Sacramento-based Drug Policy Alliance lauded the vote at a June 23 press conference. Simeon Gant, a representative of the alliance, said the state should be spending money on education programs rather than reasonless student drug testing. “It’s stripping students of privacy rights and civil liberties,” he said.

Other supporters of the bill include the state PTA, NAACP and ACLU, which claim that random drug testing is ineffective and too expensive in times of budget cuts.

In the Chico Unified School District, the issue of student searches has become one of civil liberties.

The CUSD’s current policy provides for searches based on reasonable suspicion but also allows for random drug searches.

Assistant Superintendent Kelly Staley said the CUSD allows random searches such as using a Breathalyzer on every third person wanting to get into a school dance, for example.

“It’s had some really good effects,” she said.

SB 1386 would also recommend that, besides any punitive action a district might take, it offer counseling or treatment to students who test positive. Staley said the CUSD already does that, typically issuing “a suspended expulsion based on them going to counseling.”

The CUSD’s attorney has advised trustees that to legally justify using drug-sniffing dogs, the district would have to show reasonable suspicion to search based on a widespread drug problem on a particular campus.

Terry Bogue, who runs the Chico franchise of Interquest, a drug-sniffing-dog company that contracts with several local school districts but not the CUSD, said the bill wouldn’t affect the way he and his dog, Indy, do business.

“We don’t do suspicionless searches,” he said. Instead, Indy will sniff an entire classroom that has been picked at random—a process that Bogue said is not legally considered a search. If she “reacts” on a backpack or other object—never a person—that’s considered reasonable suspicion, and it’s up to school administrators to decide how to handle it.

The bill passed even though Andrea Barthwell, the Bush administration’s deputy director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), argued against it.

Barthwell told Assembly members that President Bush would give $25 million in grants to school districts that chose to continue with random drug testing policies.

The bill will be sent to the Assembly floor next week and if passed will be the first of its kind enacted in the country.

The bill reads, in part, that drug-search programs take money away from educational programs, and, "Random, suspicionless drug and alcohol testing impairs the trust and cooperation between parents, pupils and school staff that is instrumental to a productive learning environment, thereby distracting pupils, educators, and administrators, from the core educational mission of the public schools."