A proposed law to let schools conduct random drug tests hit a setback Wednesday when House leaders sent it back to the Education Committee rather than putting it up for a vote by the full chamber.
The bill to require random drug testing of students in extra-curricular activities has been perking through the legislative system for at least four years.
It was on the edge of its first full vote in the House, but the committee that sends bills to the floor instead sent the drug-testing measure back for further discussion.
State Representative Les Winningham, a former Pickett County school superintendent, hopes his measure won’t die again this year. He says lawmakers should be worried about undetected drug use by students.
“There are certain drugs … obviously, a lot of drugs ….that you don’t know that a kid’s involved with, until they’re too deeply involved in it.”
The state once conducted such tests on student athletes, but the state Attorney General said that wasn’t fair because other students weren’t subject to the same restrictions.
Winningham’s bill would require testing football and basketball players – but also the speech team and the band. The House Education Committee is expected to reconvene to look at the bill one more time.
The Senate version of the bill is ready to go to the Senate floor, so the bill is within two votes of being passed into law.
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The bill is HB 3200 Winningham/SB 2621 Tracy.
Winningham says schools had a random drug testing program until it was ruled unfair.
“We had a state law that said that we could do some drug testing, back a few years back, and the attorney general ruled that it was in violation, the law needed to be tweaked, It needed to be broadened from athletes to the general, extra-curricular program students as well.”
“So the original intent is just to straighten that issue up and let school systems decide for themselves if they wanted to conduct a random drug test of their students that participate …in all extracurricular activities.”
The fiscal note for the bill explains how school systems could implement such a program – choosing to do so only if they have the resources to do it.
The average cost for a drug test is $25 to $45, the state Fiscal Review office says. So drug testing for about5 percent of the 242,000 students in extra curricular activities (i.e., testing 12,000 students) would run about $302,575, the office says.
Currently a school official can require drug testing of a student if the situation shows certain “reasonable indications” that the student is using some kind of banned substance. Legislative lawyers list (the in the bill summary) these “reasonable indicators”:
(1) The student has violated school policy;
(2) The test will yield evidence of the violation or will establish that the student either was impaired due to drug use or did not use drugs;
(3) The test is in pursuit of legitimate interests of the school in maintaining order, discipline, safety, supervision and education of students;
(4) The test is not conducted for the sole purpose of discovering evidence to be used in a criminal prosecution; and
(5) The test is conducted in the presence of a witness, as designated in the policy of the local board of education.
As the current bill is amended, a student caught using drugs couldn’t be suspended or expelled solely on the results of a drug test. And school systems testing would have to set a program to assist students in seeking treatment, if treatment is called for.
Winningham believes the bill would act as a prevention measure.
“The intent, the belief is, that if you have random drug testing, and students know they’re subject to be tested, at any given time, then, we believe that it will discourage them from ever attempting to get them.”
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