Marijuana Policy Project

The idea that raising the risk that wrongdoing will be caught will deter the wrongdoer is a tempting one, and it's behind a Royal Oak School district proposal to randomly test sixth-graders through 12th-graders for drug use.

The program is built on a faulty assumption. Subjecting students to random drug tests won't discourage them from using illegal narcotics, according to a pair of University of Michigan studies.

But it may drive home a destructive lesson about the value of civil liberties in America.

Royal Oak Superintendent Thomas Moline, who proposed the testing, argues the greater possibility that drug use will be detected will make students pause before trying an illegal substance.

That's not the case, say the University of Michigan researchers, who in 2003 completed a pair of extensive studies that found students in schools that employ random drug tests use illegal substances at about the same rate as those in schools that don't.

Moline says the tests will shield students from peer pressure.

But if children put that much thought behind the decision to try drugs, they probably won't be using them in the first place.

The Royal Oak tests are somewhat less offensive because parents must volunteer their children for the program. Results of the tests will go directly to parents and won't be seen by the school district.

Parents could just as easily take their children to a physician's office and have them tested for drug use, if they believe that's necessary. And the district would not be on the hook for the $40 per test cost.

It's hard to see how randomly yanking students out of classroom, without any reason to suspect inappropriate behavior, and demanding a drug test is any different than posting security guards at the exit doors of a shopping mall and randomly subjecting customers to searches to detect shoplifting.

We wouldn't tolerate that as a society; we should find random drug tests no less objectionable.

Students conditioned to forfeit their constitutional rights at an early age will be less likely to fight to preserve those liberties as adults.

Royal Oak's idea is well intentioned. But the damage it will do to the concept that students — and everyone else — have a right to be trusted until they prove themselves untrustworthy is not worth the questionable benefits this program promises.