Washington, DC: Federal funding to pay for the establishment of random student drug testing programs has fallen dramatically in recent years – from a high of $7.2 million in 2005 to less than $2 million for the 2007-2008 school year, according to figures released by the US Department of Education.
According to the agency, school districts in 15 counties in seven states will receive approximately $1.6 million in federal funding to establish new programs for the 2007-2008 school year. Twenty-one states received federal funding in 2005 to develop new drug testing programs.
Of the $1.6 million appropriated for the 2007-2008 school year, more than a third of the funding will go to schools in Texas.
According to federal guidelines, education funds may be provided to public schools to pay for the implementation of random drug testing programs for students who participate in competitive extra-curricular activities. Schools that adopt policies allowing for students to be randomly drug tested if they have their parents’ written consent may also apply for federal grant funding.
Earlier this year, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) sponsored a series of nationwide “summits” encouraging middle-school and high-school administrators to enact federally sponsored random student drug testing programs. The 2007 summits marked the fourth consecutive year that the White House funded the symposiums.
“Year after year the federal government wastes taxpayers’ dollars in their effort to persuade school administrators that they should adopt this failed policy, but each year there are fewer and fewer takers,” NORML Senior Policy Analyst Paul Armentano said.
Armentano said that only federally approved evaluation assessing the impact of student drug testing on youth drug use determined, “Drug testing, as practiced in recent years in American secondary schools, does not prevent or inhibit student drug use.”
Armentano added: “Random student drug testing is a humiliating, invasive, expensive practice that fails to achieve its stated goal of deterring student drug use. The Feds would do best to simply cease funding this failed policy altogether.”
For more information, please contact Paul Armentano, NORML Senior Policy Analyst, at (202) 483-5500.