The idiot test

School officials in New Jersey are celebrating because they think their random student drug testing program is working.

The schools completed their second round of random drug testing Tuesday...None tested positive for use of drugs or alcohol.

The school subjects all students who participate in extracurricular activities to random urine and saliva testing.

"If you expect us to bring back a lot of positives you don't understand how the program works," [testing czar John] Graf said. "The biggest thing this policy does is deter kids from doing drugs."

Actually, all these policies do is deter at-risk kids from joining afterschool activities.

Ask yourself: what kid who smokes marijuana every now and then is going to sign up for the chess club or debate team knowing that they'll be forced to submit a dirty urine sample? Drug testing is just an idiot test.

According to the largest-ever study on the topic, school-based drug testing fails to reduce drug use by young people.

School officials are putting students at greater risk by pushing them toward the streets between the end of the school day and the time their parents come home from work. If educators are really concerned with keeping young people safe, they should be welcoming students into positive afterschool learning environments, which have been proven to reduce youth drug use.

And the testing is expensive, too.

The district received a $120,000 federal grant to run the program for three years.

Student drug testing does nothing to deter young people from doing drugs. All it does is invade their privacy, put them at greater risk, and flush taxpayers' money down the toilet - literally.