WHY DRUG TESTS FLUNK

Janelle Brown - Salon (US Web)

Mon, 22 Apr 2002

According to the students at rural Rushville Consolidated High School, there are a dozen ways to pass a drug test. You can march down to the local video store and buy a packet of "Karma" urine-cleansing powder. You can toss salt in your urine sample or drop in a strand of hair coated with hairspray.

More often than not, it's simply a matter of choosing the right kinds of drugs, say the teens -- Ecstasy and alcohol disappear from your system within hours; marijuana can take up to 30 days.

Some of these methods -- such as the hairspray and the salt -- sound more mythic than magic, but whatever the kids are doing, it seems to work.

The drug testing vans roll up to the Rushville campus every few weeks, and 25 students are randomly asked to produce a urine sample; yet hardly anybody is ever get caught with drugs in their system. And it's not because they aren't doing drugs.

"I'd guess 75 percent of my class has tried marijuana," senior Adam Sadler says, sitting outside the cafeteria during a sunny lunchtime in April; his friends, perhaps trying to impress, estimate even higher. "A lot of kids do drugs at this school; though it kind of depends on who you are," one says. "The thing is to just make sure you pass the tests."

For six years, Rushville Consolidated has required random drug tests from between 75 to 90 percent of its 900 or so students, including anyone who participates in extracurricular activities or plays sports. Cheerleaders get tested; so does everyone who drives a car to school. Students must "volunteer" to pee in a cup in order to attend the senior prom. If they get caught with drugs, alcohol or tobacco in their systems, they are denied participation in these activities until they can prove they're clean.

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