HIGH HOPES
Green Valley High School principal will ruin more lives than he will save with random drug testing
BY DOUG FRENCH

Doug French, associate editor of Liberty Watch: The Magazine, is an executive vice president of a Nevada bank. He is the 2005 recipient of the Murray N. Rothbard Award from the Center for Libertarian Studies. Other stories by Doug French

The War on Drugs reared its ugly head in January with Green Valley High School Principal Jeff Horn announcing that athletes at his school will be randomly drug tested all year-round. Forms were sent to parents to garner their consent and the $10 per athlete charge. Now other schools in Clark County are thinking about following Horn�s lead.

Of course, singling out athletes for testing is arbitrary and capricious. But, Green Valley High is a government school, so that is no surprise. Besides, the odds of catching a junkie jock are much greater than nabbing a doping debater. Horn told parents that 30 percent of drug-related transgressions involved athletes.

Parents could tell the Green Valley brass to stick it. But let�s face it: These parents have no choice. The main reason athletes are being selected for testing is that they have the most to lose. No test, no play. And it�s not like these kids or their parents can take a principled stand and say �no.� These kids only have one chance to play high school athletics.

If Green Valley High tried to get all parents to buy into the testing, the response would likely be, �Put it in your pipe and smoke it.� Of course, Principal Horn is receiving kudos for this invasion, and likely believes he�s doing God�s work by keeping kids off drugs.

Well, it likely won�t work as a well as he thinks. There will be plenty of lives and potential careers ruined by these tests. I hate to think what would have happened if Abilene High School in sleepy Abilene, Kansas would have instituted such a policy back in the 1970s. More than a few good kids, who went on to lead productive adult lives, might have lost the chance for many opportunities after high school, just because they did a little experimenting in their younger years.

Of course, the Supreme Court has sanctioned athlete drug testing and the U.S. Department of Education is even giving out $30 million in taxpayer dollars to fund this nonsense. That right there tells us it�s a bad idea.

But Green Valley parent Judy Hendrickson, the mother of three athletes who may have to pee in a cup on demand, thinks Horn is �on the right path.� But maybe Ms. Hendrickson is getting the odds wrong. In the January edition of Psychology Today, the point is made that teen sports are more dangerous than teen marijuana use. There has never been a death reported that was attributed to marijuana overdose, while 13 high school football players lost their lives due to playing injuries in 2006 alone.

And smoking a little pot impairs driving far less than the drug most teenagers use � alcohol. But, as psychiatrist Maia Szalavitz explains, physical fitness and sports are valued by society, while we �disapprove of unearned pleasure from recreational drugs. So we�re willing to accept the higher level of risk of socially preferred activities � and we mentally magnify risks associated with activities that society rejects, which leads us to arresting marijuana smokers.�

Certainly high school sports build far more character than recreational drug use. Nobody remembers any specific nights (or days) of getting blasted while in high school. But the details of every game are as clear when the athlete is in his or her 50s as the day after the game was played 30-plus years ago.

Every high school football player remembers the smell of new mowed grass mixed with morning dew from August two-a-day practices. Anyone who played on a team that came from behind in the second half when, the game was seemingly lost, is the kind of employee a business can count on to never give up, no matter the deadline or obstacles.

But do-gooder Jeff Horn will deprive dozens of student athletes these memories and training, all so he can say he saved the life of a young addict every once in a while. If all the parents of the athletes stood up and said �no,� they could likely stop this school-turns-nanny policy. But they won�t and can�t. Their kids have a precious talent. A talent few have, and many want: the ability to compete in sports, representing their school.

The best we can hope for is that Principle Horn loses many hours of sleep over the lives he ruins.