SSDP High Schoolers Rally Against Drug Testing

Arguably the most disturbing trend in the war on drugs when it comes to young people is the expansion of random suspicionless drug testing of high school students. While most high school students oppose the humiliating practice of having to pee in a cup in front of their teachers, many feel powerless to take on the powers that be and actually do something to stop it. Those students can look to students at the Francis W. Parker School in Chicago for inspiration.

An SSDP chapter at Francis Parker, led by Jeanne Barr, is leading a day of action on Friday, March 3 to protest a bill in the Illinois Legislature that would permit public high schools to implement random student drug testing of all students in extra curricular activities. The students are taking a courageous stand by rallying against this bill, and at SSDP we hope other high school students around the country will take notice and organize similar actions.

Below is a copy of a press release about the action.

Students Rally Against HB3554
and Random Suspicionless Student Drug Testing
WHAT: Rally against HB3554
WHO: Students for Sensible Drug Policy from The Francis W. Parker School
WHEN: Friday, March 3, 2006 11:30 AM
WHERE: The Water Tower

HB3554, which is currently before the general assembly, is designed to permit schools to require students involved in school-sponsored and school-supported athletic or extra-curricular activities to submit to random, suspicionless drug testing. Many schools around the country have already implemented these tests. These are specifically urine tests that are designed to detect marijuana, cocaine, opiates, amphetamines, and PCP. However, they do not detect alcohol nor tobacco, the most commonly used drugs. The least expensive tests cost from $10 to $30 per student tested.

Studies show that these tests are expensive, ineffective, and a gross misallocation of scarce resources. Also, the tests endorse the erosion of certain constitutional rights and American values. The tests are dangerous in that they may lead students to use more hazardous drugs that are less detectable by conventional drug tests. These tests frequently provide false positives and detract from important educational funds. Additionally, and perhaps most poignantly, they are proven to have no positive effect in deterring any drug use among students.

Students of Francis W. Parker, a high school located in Lincoln Park, will be sharing this important information with the public on March 3, 2006. Their mission is to educate Chicago’s citizens about the current issue before the general assembly in Springfield and to encourage those who disagree with the bill to protest it by contacting their State Senator Kimberly Lightford, chair of the Senate Education Committee.

SSDP, or Students for Sensible Drug Policy, is an organization dedicated to involving students in the political process and providing education on the Drug War.

For more information, please contact Jeanne Barr at 773-213-2025 or jbarr@fwparker.org

Snitch on a classmate, win a prize!

With thousands of high schools implementing random drug testing and canine drug search programs across the country, I thought that school boards and administrators couldn't possibly stoop any lower in their willingness to sell out students to the Drug War.

I was wrong.

Today I stumbled across this January story about a new program in Fernandina Beach, Florida that pays high school students to spy on their fellow classmates. That's right folks, for a hefty $100 per snitch, students are being bribed into tattling on others who bring drugs to school.

Spearheaded by the Nassau Alcohol, Crime and Drug Abatement Coalition, the program has tentatively been titled "Safe Schools," and it's planned to start in every high school and middle school in Nassau County in August if approved by members of the Nassau County School Board.

"This program empowers the child to create a safe environment for themselves," said Susan Woodford, vice-president of NACDAC.

A safe environment, Sue? So, when a student rats out his classmate, and then tells a few friends about the iPod shuffle he bought with his reward, you're telling me that he just created a "safe environment" for himself?

Get real. In most places, rats get severely roughed up. In some places, they get shot.

Apparently, this isn't the only school district that has allowed the Drug War to subcontract students as intelligence gatherers.

Woodford said the program is modeled after similar programs in other school systems.

"We've seen other reward systems," she said. "There is the 'be safe' hotline (already in Nassau County schools), but kids don't seem to utilize that."

It seems like an appropriate time for the upcoming release of Richard Linklater's science fiction flick, A Scanner Darkly. The film, based after the Philip K. Dick novel of the same name, imagines a future in which two out of every ten people are hired to spy on the rest, largely as part of the War on Drugs.

FUN FACT: In 1898, a man named Morgan Robertson wrote a book named Futility about an enormous British passenger liner, which, deemed to be unsinkable, departs on an April voyage, hits an iceberg and sinks in the North Atlantic, killing most passengers aboard due to an insufficient number of life boats. Futility was published 14 years before the Titanic sank under incredibly similar circumstances. The name of the doomed passenger liner in Robertson's book? The Titan.

I sincerely hope that A Scanner Darkly does not become our generation's Futility.

Retreat Ruminations

Having just returned from the SSDP Strategic Planning Retreat, I feel especially honored to be leading such an amazing group of activists. Throughout the weekend I was constantly impressed by the thoughtfulness, intelligence, and dedication shown by everyone involved in this organization. All of the board, staff, and chapter members in attendance had strong opinions on the direction they would like to see the organization take and projects we should work on. Yet while passions sometimes flared, everyone maintained respect for their fellow activists and their opinions.

One of the issues that everyone agreed on was the need for better communications systems between the SSDP chapters and the SSDP national office, and between the SSDP chapters themselves. Our current Talk List is clearly outdated, and we will be working to utilize new technologies and new approaches to communication. Everyone involved in an SSDP chapter shares similar goals and aspirations. We need to find a better way to keep everyone connected and feeling like they are part of a nationwide movement with like-minded students working on similar issues around the country.

While we did not leave the retreat with a complete strategic plan for the organization, we did identify a number of issues that are important to the organization’s stakeholders. In the coming year, SSDP will be designing new projects for chapters to work on. These will include projects focusing on student drug testing, schools not prisons, the ONDCP media campaign, Latin America, and expanding the Campus Change Campaign. We will also be encouraging SSDP chapters to get involved in the upcoming Congressional elections, in particular attempting to get our values and issues injected into Congressional races.

The next few months are going to be a period of intense work and restructuring for SSDP. We will be working at the national office to develop these new projects and communications systems. Meanwhile, I will be working directly with the chairman of the board of directors to develop a strategic plan for SSDP to help chart our course for the coming years.

I was especially happy that some of our chapter leaders were able to make it to the retreat this past weekend. Input from our chapters is critical for us at the national office. I strongly encourage our chapters leaders to call or e-mail me any time you have a comment, question, or suggestion about SSDP. In particular, if you have suggestions for ways that we can all better communicate with one another, or ideas about projects you are working on, please e-mail me at kris@ssdp.org.

This organization is going to be at the heart of major reforms in the war on drugs over the next few years. I hope you will join us in our coming successes.

Strategic Planning Retreat: Photo Spread

Friday evening cooking contest (we're not just activists, we can cook too!):
Strategic Planning:And your two favorite bloggers...

Possums on pot

The Drug Czar's "blog" reports that police in New Zealand have recruited pot-loving possums in their ongoing effort to eradicate marijuana plants.

"New Zealand police have an unusual ally in their annual crackdown on the country's illegal marijuana harvest—possums.

"They love it, absolutely love it," Detective John Nicholls, of Motueka, told the Nelson Evening Mail after returning from a week-long police and air force helicopter hunt for pot plants at the top of the South Island.

He said one crop was "chewed to bits—it was the worst I've ever seen."

I love the silliness of this story, absolutely love it - especially since it serves as a bit of comic relief to the seriousness of the strategic planning retreat SSDP is engaging in this weekend.

Winds of Change in the Windy City

I just landed in Chicago Midway airport, and am now sitting in the food court, munching on some french fries, and mentally preparing for what will be one of the most important weekends in the history of drug policy reform. Today, at 4pm, SSDP leaders from across the country will convene in Chicago and commence the 2006 Strategic Planning Retreat. Simply put, the purpose of this retreat is to formulate a strategic plan for the organization as we move forward throughout the coming years. I am honored to be a part of this event and could not ask for a better group of activists to take on this endeavor with me.

SSDP is at a crucial turning point. Having been founded by a few ambitious college students just eight years ago, we have grown into an expansive, well-recognized, and highly effective organization. We have recently seen a significant victory in the form of partial repeal of the HEA Drug Provision. We are filing two lawsuits against the government, one of which has been endorsed by the New York Times. And SSDPers around the country are assessing the current drug policies on their campuses, and formulating campaigns to enact sensible drug policies close to home.

This weekend, we will take this momentum, whittle it to a point, and over the coming years, drive it deep into the heart of the Drug War. An ambitious goal, to be sure. But if there's anyone that can do it, it's the DARE Generation.

"Bill" of Rights

States are increasingly telling people convicted of crimes to fork over loot just for exercising their right to public defenders, according to the New York Times.

The bills are meant to help states cover the increased cost of the criminal justice system.

National figures concerning fees assessed to criminals are not available, but Washington is something of a case study. The state sends out some 79,000 bills every month, and it collected about $25 million last year. But these collection efforts are barely making a dent in the $1.2 billion owed by former offenders, much of it for the cost of prison room and board, which can reach $50 a day. The budget of the State Department of Corrections for the two-year period ending in 2007 is more than $1.4 billion.

Some people are even stripped of their right to vote until they pay up in full.

Beverly Dubois, a 49-year-old former park ranger in Washington State, spent nine months in jail for growing and selling marijuana. She still owes the state almost $1,900 for court costs and various fees. Until she pays up, the state has taken away her right to vote.

Vanita Gupta from the NAACP notes that the threat of legal bills doesn't just affect people who have actually committed crimes.

"The prospect of having to pay for court costs is going to dissuade some defendants from going to trial," Ms. Gupta said. Even an innocent defendant, she said, may prefer a guilty plea to a trial if the downside includes not only a longer sentence but also a crushing debt.

When the government plays criminal justice bill collector, people are unnecessarily prevented from moving on with their lives, not unlike when they are affected by the HEA Drug Provision or the other bans on public benefits for people with drug convictions.

Justin Holmes doesn't need titles!

The ongoing scare over the warning label being placed on stimulants is starting to bother me.

My problem with this drama first started a week or so ago, when the headlines all played various themes of, "Ritalin and similar drugs...." As I have said before, I have a problem with the extent to which the powers that be have convinced us to willingly except their terminology for drugs – from the classifications (“medicine,” “drug,” “drink,” on one level, “stimulant” and “depressant” on another level) right down to the actual names of the drugs – we repeat, with a straight face, names from “Paxil” to “Adderall” to “Acid” to “Crank” without ever really considering how biased this naming system is.

When the news media repeats this jargon, it compounds the problem. When it occurs in headlines (and not just a few of them – hundreds in one day), it becomes truth in too many minds.

Now we see an interesting juxtaposition. For so long, speedy drugs like amphetamine and methylphenidate have been billed as “medicine” for the treatment of “attention deficit disorder,” an affliction I’m quite sure I could have been diagnosed with as a child and probably even now if I wanted even easier access to these drugs than the market on a college campus already affords. Suddenly, when people report having side effects which are very typical of these kinds of drugs, a stark reminder is cast that yes, indeed, these are drugs.

"Every single adult patient I saw today, the first thing out of their mouth was, 'Am I going to drop dead on this?' Every single one of them," said Dr. Timothy Wilens, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

We have come to blindly trust the “established” medical regime so much that we forget our own experiences (personal or otherwise) with drugs. We have come to accept the schema of “disorders” to such a degree that we have forgotten the infinitely fine scale of human thought and the chemistry with which it corresponds.

Of course, it goes without saying that these drugs do help some people with concentration problems, just as SSRIs help some people with chronic depression. They may not be addressing the most fundamental cause, but their effects are obviously helpful for a segment, albeit small, of the population suffering from these problems.

Personally, I don’t really care much about whether or not these drugs have one warning or another on the side of them – I don’t think it will make people think any more critically about their role in society and the disorders which are invented to market and sell them.

Perhaps a more appropriate warning would read, “Caution: The disorder, malady, disease, ailment, sickness, bug, infection, syndrome, or condition for which this drug has been prescribed may not actually exist.”

Drug Czar begs for $$$

The Drug Czar put out a press release today, in which he essentially begs Congress to give him more money to put anti-drug propaganda on the airwaves.

Just take a look at the headline and sub-headline:

New Ads Call On Parents To Set Clear Rules About Drugs

*Ad Campaign Is The Last Planned TV Effort Targeting Parents This Year, Due To Limited Funds*

The release goes on to detail how his budget has been slashed.
Due to limited funds, the campaign is the last planned TV advertising effort targeting parents this year.  Congress reduced the President's proposed budget for the Media Campaign by $21 million this year, but the President has proposed restoring funds next year to the 2004 level.  "Parental disapproval of teen drug use plays a strong role in preventing teens from drug use," said John P. Walters, Director of National Drug Control Policy.  "We risk losing the hard-won momentum we have gained over the past few years and seeing youth drug use rebound."

It's really sad that the Drug Czar is pitching the fact that Congress cut his budget as a story to reporters.

Sugar high

Via The Agitator, we learn that a sixth-grader in Aurora, IL has been arrested for bringing a bag of sugar to school.

Police in Aurora have confirmed that a 12-year-old boy who said he brought powdered sugar to school for a science project last week has been charged with a felony for possessing a look-alike drug.

The sixth grade student at Waldo Middle School in Aurora also was suspended for two weeks from school after showing the bag of powdered sugar to his friends.

The boy, who is not being identified because he is a juvenile, said two other boys asked if the bag contained cocaine after he showed it to them in the bathroom Wednesday morning. The boy's mother said he told them it did, but then added, "just kidding."

Aurora police arrested the boy after a custodian at the school reported the boy's comments. The youngster was taken to the police station and detained before being released to his parents that afternoon.

While shocking, this is nothing new. There have been plenty of other pre-teens arrested for bringing fake drugs to school.