Disappeared News

City Prosecutor Peter Carlisle's letter to the editor in the August 28 Honolulu Advertiser pushes drug sniffing dogs as the answer to an imagined schoolhouse addiction problem. Perhaps it's time to revisit the issue of drug testing, student surveillance, and the prosecutor's own role in creating a self-serving paranoia that furthers his enforcement goals.

Carlisle and Hawaii's "enforcement cabal" (loosely US Attorney Ed Kubo, Peter Carlisle, Lt. Governor Duke Aiona and others in the Lingle administration) must have been disappointed in the August 16 Advertiser article contrasting a national survey with Hawaii results. A 2003 study of 30,000 Hawaii students conducted by our own Department of Health and cited in the sidebar Hawai'i Students 'Just Say No' found drug use at historically low levels in Hawaii's schools. The story said it was "the lowest ever," and "monthly prevalence rates for illicit drug use were lower in Hawai'i than nationwide." But that doesn't make for a successful drug war, so Carlisle conveniently ignored it in his letter and tried to smear Hawaii's schools with the less encouraging national statistics.

Usage of every kind of drug continues on a steady downward trend in our schools, so there's little reason to subject students to intrusive dog searches. Education and prevention seem to work effectively here. Citizens spoke out at the cabal's 2004 drug summit and denied them support for excessive enforcement. We clearly prefer education, prevention and treatment. And why not, they have worked for Hawaii, in both the schools and in the community.

Two years ago Carlisle was willing to risk sacrificing the reputation of Mid-Pacific Institute, the school his son attended, by pushing school administrators, over the protests of a parent group, to institute random "voluntary" drug testing of students. With the just-released 2003 Department of Health study of public (and some private) schools showing low and declining rates of drug use, Carlisle put the hammer down on Mid-Pac to drug test its students.

The risk? Why should this particular private school need to institute random drug testing? Were there incidents we weren't told about? If so, might parents decide to send their children to another school which didn't admit to needing drug testing?

The school may well have been pressured by Carlisle for self-serving reasons. It was easy to speculate that the real target would later be the public schools. Mid-Pac was only a dry run, a willing test case so to speak. Or else, of course, they really did have a drug problem (in which case, as the parents pointed out, there were evidence-based programs available to them that produce real benefit).

Not only is random testing of questionable value, but it doesn't equip students to make their own decisions about the dangers of drug abuse in the future. It's also hard to show that the program is working. Is it successful if a handful of students are caught? Is it successful if none are caught? In other words, the program was put in place without the possibility of measuring its success rate. That's one way to recognize when an action is not driven by science but by politics.

The dogs are unnecessary except to promote a state of constant fear. Whenever the dog and its handler appear on the scene, everyone is supposed to remember that we're engaged in a war against drugs in our schools.

In fact, there's no need to spy on student lockers. There's no need to look for drugs in every knapsack.

Board of Education members who would defy provisions of our federal and state constitutions guaranteeing rights of privacy even to students will gain little because the schools are not, in fact, hotbeds of drug dealing and addiction. Studies show exactly the opposite. Instead, the BOE will be playing into the hands of the enforcement cabal.

Prosecutors and the dog-sniffing service have a clear interest in hyping a threat, but there's no evidence that there is one.