So the question of the day over on parentdish is “Should there be random drug testing in middle school?” They offer a point and counterpoint, both of which are idiotic, but clearly influenced by the sheer lunacy of our policies and conventional wisdom about drugs.
Dori Hartley takes the “con” side. She reasonably insists that subjecting children to the indignity and paranoia of random drug tests is outrageous. Then she goes on to insist that her mighty wrath, tough love, and fear mongering will prevent her daughter from ever doing drugs:
I don’t want my kid drug tested. She won’t be doing drugs because I won’t let that happen. Think that’s not a possibility? Think I’m being naive? Watch me.
Because, drugs, like cigarettes, are not something I will tolerate on any level. And, should my child even try, she will see what anger really looks like.
And the wrath of Mom? That won’t be random.
Jessica Samakow takes the pro side with the strange argument that it will be a relief to children to pee in a cup for a grown up because then they won’t feel as much peer pressure to do drugs.
Besides curiosity, kids often try drugs because of peer pressure. As the joint is passed their way at a party, friends encourage them to take a puff. “Everyone is doing it,” they say. And, if you don’t inhale, you’re a wimp. A loser.
In response, some kids might ask, “But what if I get caught?”
“Oh, no worries,” their peers will try to convince them. “You won’t, as long as you’re careful.”
But here’s the thing: If those kids knew they had to face random drug testing at school, the concerns of hesitant kids are suddenly totally valid.
As one teacher explains to CBS, it gives them an easy way out.
It doesn’t occur to either one of these writers that an alternative to Freaking The Hell Out is to scale back the Refer Madness, and direct our attention toward creating actual reality-based education and teaching children practical life skills.
What’s so infuriating to me about our Refer Madness culture is that practical solutions are impossible for no other reason than that they don’t appear tough or zero-tolerance or punitive enough. For instance, we can’t sentence people to the Sinclair Method, because it allows drinking. It may have an actual success rate; it may be practical; it may work… But we’ll stick with the program that is proven to be completely ineffectual, and perhaps even worse than nothing, because it looks better.