Editorial: Teacher Drug Tests
January 13, 2009
Charleston Gazette
No easy solution
We've always felt that marijuana should be decriminalized, because it's no more harmful than beer, whisky, tobacco and other legal substances.
However, certain high-risk occupations should be kept free of all types of intoxicants. Police officers carrying loaded pistols shouldn't be stoned on pot or woozy from alcohol. Neither should airline pilots who have many lives at stake. Or truck drivers, toxic chemical workers, bus drivers, nuclear plant operators, etc.
Schoolteachers are in a different category. They don't pose a potential safety hazard. Yet it would be undesirable if any came to class half-swacked, or sneaked cigarettes in restrooms. Kanawha administrators are correct to try to prevent it.
Nonetheless, the plan to impose random drug tests on Kanawha teachers and other school personnel has been shot down by U.S. Judge Joseph Robert Goodwin. He said the county school board showed no evidence of rampant abuse or any actual harm. Therefore, to impose urine tests on many innocent teachers would violate their right to be safe from "unreasonable searches" as guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment in the Bill of Rights.
"A concrete danger must be an actual, threatened danger and not some perceived potential danger," the judge wrote. "To justify such a suspicionless search, I must not engage in a speculative exercise to find remote risks of horrible disasters .... A train, nuclear reactor or firearm in the hands of someone on drugs presents an actual concrete risk to numerous people - the same cannot be said for a teacher wielding a history textbook."
In the wake of this civil-rights ruling, Kanawha school chiefs should return to commonsense vigilance. If any teacher or school cook displays erratic behavior, it's appropriate to ask the employee to submit to testing. Perhaps new hires might be asked to pledge abstinence and declare willingness to be tested, if behavior ever warrants it.
But the great majority of sober, conscientious personnel cannot be forced to urinate in bottles, in a hunt for a few on the fringe. Drug tests are expensive, and mass testing puts a burden on taxpayers.
Now that the law is settled, Kanawha schools must adapt to it. | 
