When the principal showed up at the classroom door and asked the student to report to the nurse's office, the girl knew why.

"It had been about a month since they were at school, so I knew it was for a drug test," said the high school senior, who spoke under the condition that she and her school are not named. "Everyone in class knew."

The testing program had been going on for a few years, she said, so everyone seemed to accept it.

She knew that as an athlete, she was eligible to be tested. Still, she was worried.

Not because she thought she'd fail the test. She said she doesn't use drugs. Sometimes she drinks on weekends, but never during the athletic season, and this test was in-season. She was worried because she had gone to the bathroom during her previous class.

"People told me you couldn't leave the room until you went [urinated] for them," she said. "They said if you didn't go, [the testers] would say you weren't going because you knew you'd test positive."

She was given a cup, privacy and time. She couldn't go.

"I asked to go back to class and come back later but they didn't let me," she said. "I had to sit there."

 Frustrated, then angry, she cried. Finally she produced a sample.

"It was so humiliating," she said.

But was it worth it?

Five county school districts combined have tested more than 3,000 students, largely for marijuana, cocaine, PCP, amphetamines and opiates.

Only 36 students tested positive for drugs, mostly for marijuana.

Critics use those statistics to argue against drug testing. Schools test the wrong students. They test for the wrong drugs. The fact that so few students have been caught through testing shows the cost isn't justified.

Proponents use those same statistics to support their arguments. The low number of positives prove the programs serve as a deterrent: Students aren't using because they know they could get caught.

As for the $12,000 Lampeter- Strasburg will spend on testing this year, superintendent Dr. Robert Frick said, "Do I like the cost? Not necessarily. But if testing saves one kid, how can you put a price tag on that?"

Pa. Youth Surveys

Teen substance abuse

Five do tests
The county school districts that test are Conestoga Valley (implemented in 2006), Hempfield (2003), Lampeter-Strasburg (2009), Penn Manor (2006) and Solanco (2006). Columbia has approved a policy and will begin testing within a few months.

Manheim Township is holding public meetings to decide whether to adopt a testing program.

Random, mandatory testing to deter drug use is a contentious topic.

Both federal and commonwealth courts have ruled that school districts must demonstrate there is significant substance abuse by their students.

The courts have also ruled that only students involved in extracurricular activities may be tested (see related story).

Two tools school districts use to track drug use and possession among their students are Pennsylvania Youth Surveys, conducted every two years by the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, and discipline statistics contained in district incident reports registered with the Pennsylvania Department of Education and published on its Safe Schools Web site.

Districts are required to file the reports with the Department of Education, which defines an "incident" as one that "includes one or more acts of misconduct, involving one or more offenders. ... These include but are not limited to any behavior that violates a school's educational mission or climate of respect or jeopardizes the intent of the school to be free of aggression against persons or property, drugs."

The reports reflect disciplinary actions taken by schools against students for violating school rules (such as being in possession, or under the influence, of banned substances.)

One school official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, cautioned against reading too much into the incident reports in attempting to track whether testing has succesfully deterred drug use.

"They could mean a lot of things," the official said. "High numbers one year could mean a couple carloads of kids got caught at one time." On the other hand, low incident-report numbers might mean "kids are smart enough to know not to bring stuff to school."

In addition, the official said, the reports do not indicate if the disciplined students were or weren't members of the testing pool.

"If some students know they're not going to be tested, they may not be worried about showing up at school high."

Hempfield, the first county district to implement testing, reported five incidents involving the possession or use of a controlled substance and one incident of the sale or distribution of a controlled substance in the 2002-03 school year. In subsequent years, the number of reported possession/use infractions were: five (2003-04), three (2004-05), three (2005-06), five (2006-07), eight (2005-06) and six (2008-09).

Solanco, on the other hand, saw a significant change after it began testing in 2006. In the previous years, Solanco reported four incidents in 2002-03, 16 in 2003-04, 10 in 2004-05, six in 2005-06, two in 2006-07, five in 2007-08 and none in the 2008-09 year.

Penn Manor experienced a different trend. From 2003-05, the school reported no incidents involving possession or use. In 2005-06, the high school reported 10 incidents. The district implemented a drug testing program in 2006, but another 10 incidents were reported in the 2006-07 year, only four in 2007-08 and then back up to 11 in the 2008-09 school year.

Because the youth surveys are taken by the students to gauge their own use, as well as their views on their school environment, supporters say the surveys provide a much better picture of substance use among students.

Critics contend students do not take the surveys seriously and purposely exaggerate use to skew results.

The Crime Commission counters that it uses four separate strategies to validate the surveys — strategies that include asking questions in different ways, cross-referencing answers in each survey, eliminating wildly inflated use answers and using fictitious drug names (if a student reports using the drug the survey is invalidated). The commission provides a margin of error for each district's survey results.

Districts are not required to participate in the surveys, which are also inconclusive in determining the impact of testing programs on substance use, largely because Conestoga Valley is the only district with a testing program that completed surveys before and after its testing program was implemented.

Before testing was implenented, eighth-graders polled in 2005 were asked if they had used marijuana in the 30 days prior to taking the survey, and 1.9 percent said they had. That figure dropped to 1.1 percent of eighth-graders in 2007, after testing was begun in 2006.

Among 10th-graders asked the same question, that figure dropped from 9.5 to 5.3 percent over the same two-year period.

Conestoga Valley seniors did not take the survey.

Countywide, marijuana use in the 30 days prior to testing decreased among eighth-graders (3.6 percent in 2005, 3.2 percent in '07), and increased among both 10th-graders (11.1 percent in '05, 12.2 percent in '07) and 12th-graders (15 percent, '05, 17 percent in '07) who took the survey in those two years.

All surveys and findings make one thing clear. The abused substance of choice by high school students surveyed in Lancaster County is alcohol.

In 2005, 14.4 percent of eighth-graders, 31.5 percent of 10th-graders and 39.2 percent of 12th-graders reported using alcohol in the 30 days prior to the survey.

In 2007, 12 percent of eighth-graders, 28 percent of 10th-graders and 39 percent of 12th-graders reported using alcohol in the same period (30 days prior to taking the survey).

Asked if they had engaged in binge drinking 14 days prior to the survey, both eighth-graders (6 percent in 2005, 4 percent in 2007) and 10th-graders (16 percent in '05, 12 percent in '07) reported a decrease while seniors who binge drank increased from 20.7 percent in 2005 to 21.7 percent in 2007.

Statewide statistics show a larger percentage of students reporting to have used alcohol in the 30 days prior to the survey.

In 2005, students surveyed reported these use figures: sixth-grade (23.5 percent), eighth-grade (52.9 percent), 10th-grade (74.8 percent) and 12th-grade (85 percent).

The 2007 results were: sixth-grade (23.9 percent), eighth-grade (50.5 percent), 10th-grade (69.7 percent) and 12th-grade (78.4 percent).

What do tests find?
Another issue concerning urine testing centers on what the tests find.

There are different test "panels," (the types of drugs sought).

Most schools administer five-panel tests, which screen for marijuana, cocaine, PCP (or phencyclidine), amphetamines and opiates, but school officials can change how many and what types of drugs are included in the test.

But most drugs remain in users' systems for a short time, and go undetected. Some of the more popular drugs, particularly Ecstasy and cocaine, can cycle out of the body in two to three days, so students who use them on a Friday or Saturday night will test clean the following week.

Districts do not test for alcohol because it disappears from the system in 12 to 24 hours, depending on the amount consumed.

Marijuana's active ingredient, THC (or tetrahydrocannabinol), can remain in the body for up to 30 days after use and it is the drug most detected by testing.

There's another drug problem — the abuse of medications.

Said Solanco superintendent Dr. Martin Hudacs, "The biggest problem out there across the board right now is prescription drugs and you can't necessarily screen for all of those."

A student who did not want to be identified echoed: "A doctor can get you just as high as your friends can.

"Kids who have prescriptions will sell their pills to other kids who grind them up and snort them."

Dave Bender, the director of Compass Mark (formerly known as the Lancaster Council on Drug and Alcohol Abuse) said, "What [school districts] are doing is IDing a small percentage of kids who are smoking lots of weed."

That's not a bad thing, say drug researchers and counselors, who label marijuana a "gateway drug" that can lead to use and abuse of other, "harder" drugs.

Ten teenagers, currently in high school or recent graduates, agreed to comment on testing as long as they and their schools remained anonymous. Some dismissed the "gateway" argument.

"I don't believe in it," said one. "I know kids who all they wanted to do was smoke pot and that's all they did. They didn't try anything harder because they didn't want to. It's not like they smoked pot and felt like they just had to try something else."

Added another, "Your friends and acquaintances are the real gateway. The people you hang out with can influence you more than anything else. If they're partying, you're more likely to party, too."

Of the 10, two believed there is merit in testing.

"If it keeps even one or two kids from trying something, then it's worth it," one said.

Another added, "My brother played football and wanted a scholarship. Our school drug tested and he knew if he'd get caught it would really jeopardize his chances of getting a scholarship, so he didn't do anything."

However, nine of the 10 said they believe alcohol is more dangerous than marijuana. As one explained, "Alcohol is the real gateway. Once you start drinking, you're not under control. You don't really care what happens next."

Beat the test?
Another issue involves the ability of students to "beat" a test.

Everyone acknowledged there is plenty of information available, particularly on the Internet, about how to produce a clean test — some fact, some fiction.

And the school grapevine is filled with various schemes.

Seven of the 10 said they knew someone who beat a test.

"There was a kid at school who was high on acid, took the test, and they still passed because they weren't testing for it," one said.

Dr. Richard Weinstein is medical director of occupational medicine for Lancaster General Health, which works with the Penn Manor and Lampeter-Strasburg districts on student drug testing. He said personnel administering the tests are trained to recognize common methods used to "beat" a test, such as prosthetic gadgets in various skin tones that can produce urine. Masking agents can be identified.

"About everything you can think of, and some you can't, has been tried," Weinstein said.

Research regarding the success of testing is widespread, but much of the information published in pamphlets and on Web sites represents a specific slant.

One widely referenced and lengthy study conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research in 2003 concluded that testing in schools produced "a 5 percent to 7 percent decrease in the prevalence of marijuana use," but "disturbingly, a larger proportional increase in the use of other drugs."

These figures, suggested the researchers, show "testing leads students to reduce their use of drugs that can be detected [like marijuana] and to displace their use onto drugs that they think less likely to be detected."

The researchers do not rule out the ability of testing to deter use, but conclude that the most successful programs would be ones that test an entire student body, not just one segment (students involved in extracurricular activities).

The federal government's Student Drug-Testing Institute, a division of the U.S Department of Education's Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools, reports, "Administrators, faculty and students at schools that conduct testing view random testing as a deterrent, as it gives gives students a reason to resist peer pressure to try or use drugs."

Testing, according to the institute, cannot only help schools conduct early intervention with students using drugs, but also help schools eliminate use, because students under the influence can disrupt the classroom environment and affect other students as well.

The U.S. Supreme Court expanded the power of schools to conduct mandatory testing in a 2002 case and the federal government subsequently made funds available to schools to pay for testing programs.

However, says the Student Drug-Testing Institute, because testing on a larger scale has been implemented only recently, "There is not very much research in this area and early research shows mixed results."

The institute says studies have proven that "the earlier a teen begins using drugs, the more likely he or she will develop a substance abuse problem or addiction." Testing, therefore, is helpful as a deterrent to younger students because the earlier students stay away from abusing substances, the less likely they are "to develop a substance abuse problem later in life."

Many school officials said deterring lifelong abuse is an important component of all testing programs and is why many students and parents do not have problems with testing programs.

As Penn Manor Superintendent Dr. Michael Leichliter said, "Drug testing is an acceptable part of modern culture. College athletes and employees in private industry already face it.

"It's very nonchalant, matter-of-fact for the kids. It's not some huge deal."

Chip Smedley is an investigative reporter for Lancaster Newspapers. Contact him at csmedley@lnpnews.com.