High school to test students hair for drugs, where is the parental outrage

Chicago - Students will face mandatory testing for drugs and also alcohol this school year, at one northwest suburban high school. 

Concerns about underage drinking prompted St. Viator High School in Arlington Heights to add alcohol to its random drug test policy.

The test will use hair samples to determine whether a student has used alcohol in the past 90 days.
St. Viator administrators say random drug testing of students has been ongoing since 2007, and less than 1 percent have come back positive.

“We’re adding this test because we care about our kids and we want them to be the that best God created them to be,” said Corey Brost, St. Viator President.

“It’s a great vehicle for them to understand that if you’re not going to be accountable to your parents, you’re going to be accountable to somebody,” said Joe Farwell, a parent of a student at St. Viator.
And students say, it may do the job.

“Kids fear getting suspensions from school or detentions even and maybe what their parents will do, if they find out they’re getting caught, so I think it actually will make a difference,” said St. Viator student Miguel Aguilar.

The private school believes it is among the first in Illinois to have a mandatory alcohol testing policy.

A spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union questions the decision, but concedes in this case that because the school is private, only parents can object to the testing
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2013/08/05/school-to-use-hair-test-to-screen-to-student-alcohol-use/

Inaccuracy in drug testing kits ignored as doctors and private companies profits rise:

As doctors try to ensure their patients do not abuse prescription drugs, they are relying more and more on sophisticated urine-screening tests to learn which drugs patients are taking and — just as important — which ones they’re not.

The result has been a boom in profits for diagnostic testing laboratories that offer the tests. In 2013, sales at such companies are expected to reach $2 billion, up from $800 million in 1990, according to the Frost & Sullivan consulting firm. 
The growing use of urine tests has mirrored the rise in prescriptions for narcotic painkillers, or opioids. But the tests, like earlier efforts to monitor opioid prescribing, have led to a host of vexing questions about what doctors should do with the information they obtain, about the accuracy of urine screens and about whether some companies and doctors are financially exploiting the testing boom. 
For one, the tests are showing that large numbers of pain patients are not taking prescribed drugs or are taking substances not given them by a doctor. For example, a recently published study of 800 pain patients treated at a Veterans Affairs facility in North Carolina found that one-quarter of them tested negatively in a urine-screen test for a drug they had been prescribed, while 20 percent of patients tested positively for an illicit drug or a narcotic painkiller that was not prescribed. 
Such findings are in line with data recently released by Ameritox, one of the country’s biggest urine-screening laboratories. In reviewing some 500,000 tests it analyzed in 2012, the company said that about one-third of the tests failed to detect the drug prescribed by a doctor. In about 75 percent of those cases, the drug at issue was a narcotic painkiller, Ameritox said. 
The simple fact that a patient tests negatively for a prescribed drug does not necessarily mean they are selling it; it could simply mean they decided to stop taking it. Still, doctors say they now face tough choices about what to do with patients when tests show they are not taking prescribed drugs or are mixing them with unapproved drugs or illegal ones. 
For example, Dr. Roger Chou, who helped develop urine-screening guidelines for a professional medical group, the American Pain Society, said he believed that the tests were a valuable tool. But he added that he was concerned that doctors, to protect themselves, would use the tests as an excuse to drop, or “fire,” patients rather than steer them into addiction treatment or alternative pain management programs.
Such tests, however, have high rates of false positives, findings that a drug is present when it is not, and false negatives, findings that fail to detect a drug that is present. While the tests detect some drugs in a class, they may not detect others. In the case of narcotic painkillers, methadone and some other opioids are detected but oxycodone, the ingredient in OxyContin and Percocet, is not, experts said.  

The use of qualitative tests has increased sharply in recent years as a growing number of states have passed laws requiring recipients of welfare and other types of public assistance to undergo drug screening. The American Civil Liberties Union has challenged such laws, saying they violate Constitutional protections against unreasonable search. 

The annual costs of running regular quantitative tests to monitor a pain patient can run into the thousands of dollars. And with big money at stake, the growth of the urine screening industry has also opened the door to charges of illegal profiteering and other questionable activities. 
In 2010, for example, Ameritox agreed to pay $16.4 million to settle charges that it had paid kickbacks to physicians who sent tests to laboratories. And last year, another testing company, Calloway Laboratories, paid $20 million to resolve claims brought by the State of Massachusetts that it funneled cash to operators of drug treatment facilities in exchange for test work. 
Millennium Laboratories is under federal investigation, Reuters reported. The company said it was cooperating with the inquiry. Meanwhile, other urine-testing companies are aggressively marketing their services to physicians by trumpeting the big profits that await if they test their patients. 
For example, a brochure distributed by one testing company, Liberty Diagnostics of Pasadena, Calif., declares that doctors can “Average $400 Profit per Screen” with “No Additional Overhead” like added staff or equipment. The brochure, which was obtained by The New York Times, also has a chart titled “Potential Profit Payout to Doctor” that states that doctors who perform 10 urine screens a week can make $155,000 annually from the tests plus an additional $133,000 for reviewing the results and discussing them with patients. 
In a telephone interview, an executive of Liberty Diagnostics, Timothy P. O’Brien, declined to discuss the brochure and would not confirm its authenticity. A former sales representative for the company, after hearing a reporter’s description of the brochure, said it was genuine.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/02/business/increase-in-urine-testing-raises-ethical-questions.html?ref=business&_r=1&