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Linn State Admits They Have No Data to Justify Drug Testing Program

Linn State Technical College
A month ago we noted in Drug War Chronicle that Linn State Technical College in Missouri had instituted a broad drug testing policy of all incoming students, the first public institution of higher education in the country to adopt a suspicionless drug testing policy. The ACLU of East Missouri announced it would litigate to block the program, and asked students at Linn State who were opposed to the program to contact them to be plaintiffs.

Evidently they found some, as an article by Timothy Williams at the New York Times this week reports that ACLU has obtained a preliminary injunction blocking the program. Williams interviewed the lawyer for the college, Kent Brown, who admitted the school had no data to justify or motivate the program :

Q. Did graduates have problems with failed drug tests at their jobs? Is that the reason for this?

A. I probably need to answer that this way: I can’t give you specific examples, but it would not surprise me at all if some students encountered difficulties with drug tests after they graduated. The members of our advisory councils for various programs were some of the initiators of this idea and I doubt they would have brought it up if it hadn't been a problem. We don't have any statistics once they graduate. (Emphasis added.)

And if the school has anecdotal information to motivated the policy, they did not share it with their attorney prior to his interviewing with the media -- with The New York Times of all outlets -- a case that had already hit the media four weeks before Williams contacted them.

It begs the question, did decision makers at Linn State review any hard information about drug testing programs and their track record, or the drug testing issue as a whole, before deciding to drug test all their students and charge them $50 for the privilege too? Does anyone doing drug testing review the evidence?

Location: 
Linn, MO
United States
Permission to Reprint: This article is licensed under a modified Creative Commons Attribution license.
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More NWO crap

More New World Order style suppression of education for the masses. Just call it Linn State Gestapo College, a more accurate name.

I don't understand

I don't understand why students want to stop the mandatory drug test for students. I think it should be mandated to all schools.

lets just keep people from getting a HIGHer education!!

So if you don't take the drug test NO SCHOOL. We teach the constitution in school but now your not going to give them the rights of the constitution afford them.... Sounds as if you need to back your self!!

$50 per student, 10,000 students = $500,000

and if this school is partially funded by state/federal, those are your tax dollars at work.

I think this is excessive

If you mandate this to all students the fees would also soar and Drug test are expensive. Just think if every one was charged $50 per student and the population of Linn state is almost 20,000 then the cost would skyrocket to $1 Million dollars. They could have just used that to improve the colleges facilities. 

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