Pissing Away Our Rights
Thank you, Jed Gottlieb, for your “Pee to Play” article on the recent Supreme Court ruling approving “urinate on demand” testing for high school students. The broad application of suspicionless drug testing does not bode well for a free society.
Of particular concern to NORML and organizations like it is that urine testing can detect traces of marijuana for 30+ days after use, much longer than cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, or alcohol-and obviously much longer than any impairment is present. This means that you can binge regularly on a dangerous cocktail of vodka, meth, and heroin, and not be too worried about drug testing, but smoke the occasional weekend joint and you could lose everything. Due to this fact, drug-testing programs may actually promote the use of these more dangerous drugs.
Of course we don’t want school kids high on any substance. But drug testing, and particularly mass suspicionless drug testing, intrudes on intimate bodily privacy and creates a confrontational atmosphere of mistrust.
John Masterson,
Montana NORML
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