Washington
Secretary of Education William J. Bennett, announcing an initiative to help counter drug abuse among students, has urged the states to consider “all law-enforcement methods"—including use of the National Guard—as potential weapons against drugs in the nation’s schools.
“If there’s a drug problem in the schools, there should be people there whose sole responsibility it is to eliminate it right away,” said Mr. Bennett in remarks Feb. 23 at the National Governors’ Association’s midwinter meeting here.
“I don’t care whether it’s the police, the highway patrol, the sheriff, private security forces, special personnel, or the Marines, and I don’t care whether the people are in uniform, or in trench coats, or in blue jeans,” said the Secretary.
He called the success of drug-education programs “mixed at best.”
The Education Department initiative, Mr. Bennett said in a subsequent interview, will follow “our usual pattern,” in which officials raise the issue in speeches, identify effective programs, and disseminate information. He and a press aide, Marion Blakey, declined to elaborate.
The Secretary said he would outline his plans in a March 10 speech at a meeting of the Council of Great City Schools.
Volatile Issue
Mr. Bennett’s statement comes as a five-year decline in drug use among high-school seniors has reportedly stalled, and as the effort to fight drugs in the schools is becoming an increasingly volatile issue that often pits school officials against civil-liberties groups.
In the first judicial ruling of its kind, a state judge in New Jersey decided Dec. 9 that the East Rutherford school district’s policy requiring all high-school students to submit to a urine test for drug use violates their constitutional freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. (See Education Week, Dec. 18, 1985.)
The U.S. Supreme Court, in New Jersey v. T L.D., last year established rough guidelines that the six-justice majority said balances students’ privacy rights against school officials’ responsibility to maintain discipline.
The upshot of T.L.D. “seems to be a reduction in the protection against unreasonable searches and seizures,” said Antonio J. Califa, a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union.
“We’d be very concerned that the Secretary use his office to ensure that the constitutional rights of students are respected,” he said.
Some governors lauded Mr. Bennett’s intentions.
But they questioned his statement that “if I were a governor, I wouldn’t hesitate—within constitutional boundaries, of course—to use all law-enforcement personnel and methods to rid schools once and for all of drugs.”
Responding to concerns expressed by Gov. Toney Anaya of New Mexico, Mr. Bennett said, “You can’t just be sending in the National Guard, but I don’t think that ought to be diminished” as an option.
Gov. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the Republican chairman of the N .G.A., agreed that drug and alcohol abuse in schools is a problem of “epidemic proportions.” But he said that it remains the responsibility of local school officials and that a governor’s role is limited.
First Lady’s Campaign
The First Lady, Nancy Reagan, has become a national spokesman in her own campaign against drug abuse by young people.
Mr. Bennett said that “we’ve been talking to Mrs. Reagan” about joint action, but he again declined to provide details.
President Reagan made school discipline a major education issue during his 1984 re-election campaign.
Mr. Bennett has previously stressed the need to rid the schools of drugs. In an interview in the September 1985 issue of American Legion Magazine, he said, “If I could wave a wand and change one thing in the schools—only one—it would be to get the drugs out, all of them, right now.”
Ms. Blakey, the Secretary’s aide, said Mr. Bennett decided to raise the profile of the issue because of press reports illustrating the scope of the problem.
Statistics Cited
In his remarks to the governors, Mr. Bennett cited the statistics that 17 percent of high-school seniors have tried cocaine-which he called the “uptown drug” for wealthier students-and that at least 1 million students a day use the hallucinogen commonly known as PCP (phencyclidine), which he called an inexpensive “downtown drug.”
According to University of Michigan researchers who annually survey drug use among high-school seniors, the use of cocaine and other “hard drugs,” including PCP, is increasing.
The researchers’ 1985 survey also found that while a five-year decline in drug use has leveled off, the problem is still less prevalent today than in the peak years of the late 1970’s. (See Education Week, Nov. 13, 1985.)
For example, daily marijuana use is down from 11 percent of those surveyed in 1978 to 5 percent in 1985.
The Education Department’s drug-education program was abolished in 1981 and consolidated with some 40 other programs into the Chapter 2 block grants.
Currently, the department spends less than $3 million on drug education.
