The case, which began in a rural Oklahoma school district, has attracted attention because it may clarify the rules on drug testing for 14,700 public school systems nationwide -- with potential consequences both for schools' anti-drug efforts and for students who hope to list extracurricular activities on college applications.

Federal funding is available for public school drug-testing, which is popular among parents. But so far the Supreme Court has specifically approved of testing only in the context of athletics -- holding in 1995 by a 6 to 3 vote that student athletes may be required to submit to random tests because of the safety risks of engaging in sports while on drugs and the already lessened privacy of locker rooms.

The issue yesterday was whether the logic of that ruling, which was written by Justice Antonin Scalia, could be extended to such other competitive extracurricular activities as clubs or bands.

School authorities in Tecumseh, Okla., announced such a new drug-testing policy in 1998. Under the policy, students who refuse to take the test, or test positive more than twice, may be barred from extracurricular activities for the rest of the school year, but do not face prosecution or expulsion.

For the most part, the same justices who voted in the majority in the 1995 case seemed willing to apply it to this one.

Graham Boyd, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney representing Lindsey Earls, a former Tecumseh high school choir member who sued in federal court after she was made to provide a urine specimen to teachers, told the court that the school had no "individualized suspicion" that she was using drugs.

At that point, Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who voted in the majority in 1995, noted that schools plagued by guns have employed metal detectors. "There's no individualized suspicion there," he said.

Breyer likened drug tests designed to stop drug abuse to "throat swabs" a school might use to test for contagious disease.

Later, Boyd remarked that it made sense for the court to permit drug testing for football and other potentially dangerous sports, whereas "here, you've got choir." Scalia took him to task for seeming to minimize the threat.

"Do you think life and death are not involved in the fight against drugs?" he asked. Scalia emphasized to Boyd that students are minors, and schools therefore have special latitude in limiting students' freedom for their own benefit.

Of those justices who voted for drug testing in 1995, only Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg postulated a distinction between this case and that one.

Ginsburg, who wrote a short separate opinion in 1995 indicating that she voted with the majority on the understanding that the ruling was limited to athletics, noted that, while athletes are subject to testing right up to the Olympic level, "everyday people are not."

Justice David H. Souter, a dissenter in 1995, voiced concern that the school system's arguments about the need to test students in extracurricular activities could easily "apply to every child in every school in the United States."

He pressed a lawyer for the Tecumseh school authorities about the fact that the school system itself had documented only a minor drug problem in reports to the federal government -- and had only turned up three positive results.

"Your evidentiary problem is that up to the eve of the policy, the reports are saying everything is fine," Souter told attorney Linda Maria Meoli.

Meoli replied that there were so few positive tests in part because the testing was interrupted by Earls' lawsuit.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy caused a murmur in the courtroom when he posed a hypothetical case in which a school system maintained one school with drug testing and another without.

A decision in the case, Board of Education of Independent School District No. 92 of Pottawatomie County v. Earls, is likely by July.

Source: Washington Post (DC)
Author: Charles Lane, Washington Post Staff Writer
Published: Wednesday, March 20, 2002; Page A11
Copyright: 2002 The Washington Post Company
Contact: letterstoed@washpost.com
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com

Related Articles & Web Site:

ACLU
http://www.aclu.org/

Supreme Court Seems Ready to Extend Testing
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread12293.shtml

Drug Testing Policy Debated Before Court
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread12289.shtml

High Court Reviews Student Drug Tests
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread12288.shtml

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They would apply the RICO act and SEC rules to the drug war, which is supported most strongly by politicians who receive their very largest campaign contributions from companies that produce and promote poisonous, addictive substances.

• Drug war is treason.

The Supremes have once again demonstrated that they are naught but political whores. Fancy dress and title, but whores, nonetheless. Now it seems some are closet pervs, too. And these are the final arbiters of what's legal (a.k.a. 'moral') in society?

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...."We the Sheeple",,,or;.."We the People",,can now be labeled as a terrorist slogan and/or organization.....The Boston Tea Party,,,,well,they now think that early Al-Quieda terrorists were involved,,,,.and,,,even more astonishing; is reports that claim that the taliban had been teaching Muslim children that the Islamic religion teaches that Allah was the one who first said;"No taxation without representation"......baffling. .....dddd

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Just before the beginning of this school year, the Bristol Township School Board in Pennsylvania decided that students with asthma must keep their emergency inhalers in the school office, rather than on hand.

On September 7, the board received a letter from Nancy Sander, executive director of the Allergy and Asthma Network/Mothers of Asthmatics (AANMA), a national asthma support and education group based in Fairfax, Virginia. Sander?s letter neatly encapsulated the all-too-common frustration of parents when their doctor?s advice about how to care for an asthmatic child encounters a school with an entrenched hall-monitor mentality. The letter read, in part:

"The decision to accommodate and facilitate a child?s needs with asthma is far easier than pretending their needs do not exist or that restricting student access to medications is for the safety of all students. To do so places your students with asthma at greater risk of death or missed school days, their classmates at risk of witnessing their death, and your school board at risk of lawsuits....

"If a student placed a plastic bag over a teacher?s head for a brief moment, the student would be charged with assault. But a school board voting to restrict a child?s access to his life-saving asthma medication is no less guilty of a crime. Is Bristol Township School Board really ready to accept responsibility for violating a child?s right to breathe? Are you prepared to breach the provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act?"

Three days later, the school board held a hearing and reversed its original decision. Students in Bristol Township are now allowed to retain control of their asthma inhalers.

Note: Marijuana smoke contains caryophyllene oxide, a sesquiterpene that is naturally converted by the body ito steroids. Caryophyllene oxide is also present in the scent of roses, giving powerful meaning to the age-old saying that in life, it is important to stop and smell the roses. Asthma inhalers often contain steroids.

From:
http://www.people.vcu.edu/~asneden/terpenes.htm

Triterpenes contain 30 carbons, derived essentially from coupling of two sesquiterpene precursors. Many of these compounds occur in plants as glycosides, often called saponins (molecules made up of sugars linked to steroids or tripterpenes) due to their ability to make aqueous solutions appear foamy. Arbruside E, for example, comes from a plant called Arbrus precatorius (jequerity) which has been used as an abortifacient and purgative. Arbruside E, however, appears to be relatively non-toxic, and is 30-100 times sweeter than sucrose, making it a potential sugar substitute. Triterpenes of the quassinoid class, such as bruceantin, have been shown to have significant antineoplastic activity in animal systems and have been investigated for the treatment of cancers.

Steroids are modified triterpenes. They are probably most familiar from their role as hormones, i.e., androgens such as testosterone and estrogens such as progesterone. Steroids, such as cortisone, are most often used as anti-inflammatory agents, but many have other uses such as in birth control pills. Prior to 1943, most steroids were obtained from natural sources. For example, progesterone could only be isolated in quantities of 20 mg from 625 kg of pig ovaries. The large numbers of commercially and medicinally valuable steroids available today have been made possible by the semi-synthetic preparation of progesterone from diosgenin.

This process, known as the Marker process, was developed in the early 1940?s by Russell Marker, a rather colorful character, who left his position of professor of chemistry at Penn State to pursue this project in Mexico. Marker collected Mexican yams in bandit country, processed the yams to isolate the diosgenin, and then converted the diosgenin into ca. 3 kg of pure progesterone at a cost of $8 per gram. He and a Mexican pharmacist then formed a company which later became the major pharmaceutical company, Syntex.

See also:
http://vinsonlab.tamu.edu/howard/williams.htm

• Narcosoft.com - technology with substance

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http://www.lp.org/lpn/9801-talking.html

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• Drug War is TREASON

Dan B

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