Big Chunks Of Hair Shaved For Kansas Students’ Random Drug Tests

PHILLIPSBURG, KS — Admittedly, a school superintendent in Kansas says, a plan to randomly test students for drug use didn’t work out well. Parents in Phillipsburg, Kansas, signed consent forms allowing their children to be tested — if they didn’t, their kids couldn’t participate in sports or extra-curricular activities — but they didn’t agree to having large chunks of their hair shaved off.

One student, an 18-year-old whose bout with pediatric cancer left her with hair so thin she has only needed a haircut twice in the last 15 years, had a quarter-sized bald spot on the back of her scalp that her parents said is visible.

Hair follicle drug tests show a window of drug ingestion over a period of several months, and are used to detect a variety of drugs, including amphetamines, methamphetamine, ecstasy, marijuana, cocaine, PCP and opioids. Marijuana remains in a regular user’s system for at least a month, but most pharmaceutical drugs typically aren’t detectable in blood or urine tests after a few hours or days.

Mike Gower, the Phillipsburg school superintendent, told television station KSNW the district “should have done a better job” informing parents their children’s heads would be shaved in a single spot by the drug testing.

Jeanette Anderson told Yahoo News her daughter, Chantel, who battled brain cancer as a child, “was about in tears” when she told her parents what had happened.

“It was upsetting because it happened to her, but she also saw it happen to other kids and that was upsetting to her too,” Anderson said.

Gower told the Kansas City Star he is looking for a new drug testing company after the students’ bad hair day. Typically, hair is shaved in three small spots so the bald patches won’t be visible. Once a new drug-testing company is approved by the district’s school board, new rules will require that a school employee and parent be present when the tests are done. The random hair follicle drug tests are conducted monthly.

The employee of the current drug-testing company, Compliance One, who shaved his daughter's head approached the job without heart, Brian Anderson, Chantel’s father, told Yahoo.

“She drove from Topeka up here, so that’s about four hours of driving,” he said. “And when she got here all she wanted to do was go buzz, buzz, buzz and be done and turn around and go back home.”
He told the news site he supports random drug testing, but “it just needs to be done in a better way, so it’s less stressful for the kids.”

Students who test positive for drug or alcohol use aren’t disciplined unless the consumption took place at the school or at a school function. However, those who declined to be involved in the random drug testing “will be treated in the same manner as if the student had tested positive for banned substances,” the policy states.

This is the second year the school district has randomly tested students to deter drug and alcohol use, Gower said. A 2002 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court found those tests are permissible under the Fourth Amendment, but offered “no opinion as to its wisdom,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority.

How effective those tests are in curbing drug abuse is the topic of some debate, though.

The American Academy of Pediatrics said in 2015 that although school drug testing has “hypothetical benefits,” they have resulted in only “modest reductions” in drug and alcohol use. The organization said it “opposes widespread implementation of these programs because of the lack of solid evidence for their effectiveness.”

The American Civil Liberties Union said that if schools are serious about curbing drug and alcohol use among students, they should work to involve them in school and extracurricular activities.

“Instead of putting up barriers like drug testing, schools should engage students in meaningful activities,” the ACLU said on its website.

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