Teens And Drugs: Drug Testing Students Law Proposed In Wisconsin To Battle Heroin Crisis

All high school students who want to join an after-school club should be subject to random drug testing, according to a Wisconsin lawmaker. Republican Rep. Joel Kleefisch proposed a measure this week that would combat heroin use by targeting teenagers, according to local media reports.

Students who park on campus would also need to take a drug test under the proposal. But Kleefisch conceded Tuesday at a heroin task force meeting that the proposal could be "for lack of a better term, a tough pill to swallow" for some.

“If we’re gonna attempt to actually make a difference, we need to know who those using and supplying heroin at school or at school functions is,” he said.

Republican State Rep. Cindi Duchow of Delafield countered that the measure could frighten some students. She recalled a person whose daughter was forced to miss class for hours until she could take a drug test while somebody watched.

“To randomly being pulling kids out of class for a couple hours, and then to have somebody watching them pee in a cup…that’s really disturbing,” she said.

Wisconsin Association of School Boards lobbyist Dan Rossmiller, however, said some districts already carry out similar drug testing, including schools in Arrowhead, Crivitz and De Pere, the Associated Press reported.

But Dan Rossmiller of the Wisconsin Association of School Boards also questioned whether testing students was the best way to combat heroin. He said while some schools do test students, it shouldn't be a statewide policy.

Across the nation, drug use among teens is at an all-time low, according to a survey released this week by the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse. The annual study of teens in the eighth, 10th and 12th grades found fewer children were using marijuana compared with previous years. Meanwhile, less than 3 percent of high school seniors abused the opioid pain reliever Vicodin in 2016, down from nearly 10 percent a decade ago.

“There are significant decreases in the patterns of drug consumption among teenagers in our country,” said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the study. “Quite significant, to the point where we have several drugs at the lowest levels that we’ve ever seen since the inception of the survey.”

Wisconsin also doesn't have a significant drug problem, but drug use is on the rise. The state saw 873 drug-related deaths last year, up from 795 deaths in 2014.