Love your kids? Push for drug tests

Love your kids? Push for drug tests

In the Jan 9 edition of the Daily Herald, you reported that Naperville School District 203 has backed away from drug testing students as a condition for participation in extra curricular activities. As counterpoint to that, the same day PBS News Hour ran an interview with the governor of Vermont who is instituting a major effort to address the “heroin epidemic” in his state and every state. The Herald has reported multiple times in the recent past on the rise in heroin overdoses here in DuPage County.

While I commend the District 203 school board for even discussing the problem, it looks as if one of two things has happened: 1) they have decided to bury their heads in the sand and avoid the expense and hassle of making a stronger stand than the programs they already use or 2) they are knuckling under to pressure from parents who are insulted (despite evidence such as the local rise in overdose deaths) at the thought that their little darlings would be involved in something so gauche.

Parents: if you love your kids, push your school boards to have robust programs of education, prevention and intervention, including drug testing for participation in extra curricular activities. Kids care about their

sports, clubs and organizations and that, hopefully, will be one more deterrent to using drugs.

Considering the alternative, these steps are a small price to pay.

Steve Smith

Aurora