Are your teens doing drugs? Test them

By RAQUEL RUTLEDGE

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Desperate parents dissatisfied with old-school ways of trying to tell whether their kids are doing drugs — rifling through their drawers, smelling their breath, searching their eyes — are now instead demanding proof.

They’re dragging their teens to drug testing labs and buying home testing kits by the case over the Internet.

“I tell my daughter, ‘If you want to go out tonight you’re going to pee in a cup first,’ ” said Suzanne Fugarino of Milwaukee, whose 17-year-old daughter was expelled from high school last fall after taking a crack pipe to school.

Schools, too, are getting on board, hanging banners and sending home brochures backing testmyteen.com, a Web-based company that promotes home drug tests for children.

Although random drug testing in schools — heavily promoted by the White House — has drawn some fire from the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Academy of Pediatrics, among others, parental testing of teens has gotten far less attention.

And the practice is quietly exploding.

Internet companies and drug testing labs report huge upswings in teen testing and sales of home drug screening kits.

“(Business) has been awesome,” said Debra Auer, co-owner of Express Drug Screening in Milwaukee.

Sales of home testing kits and visits to the lab by teen-toting parents have tripled in the last four years, Auer said.

Drugteststrips.com says its sales have quadrupled in the last five years, and another Milwaukee testing lab, Noble Diagnostics, says sales of home kits have jumped 30 percent in the last nine months or so.

“From a parent’s perspective, it’s the most empowering thing in the world,” said Kim Hildreth, a Dallas mother who tests her own children and sells home testing kits online at drugtestyourteen.com.

“You’re lying awake at night, staring at the ceiling, worried to death all the time,” Hildreth said. “You catch them in little fibs. You don’t know if they’re where they say they are. You worry. There’s no reason for that.”

Hildreth and other proponents call drug testing a powerful deterrent and say it gives teens a socially acceptable reason to reject drug use.

“We taught them to ‘just say no,’ but we never told them what to say next,” said Mason Duchatschek, owner of testmyteen.com.

Teens who are tested can tell their friends that their parents test them and that they will lose cell phone, car or other privileges, and their peers understand that, Duchatschek said.

Duchatschek is working with schools across the country to get them to endorse his program of parental testing instead of adopting controversial random testing programs as many other schools have done.

Home drug tests typically cost $6 to $15 for one test that can detect between five and 10 drugs, such as marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamines, opiates and benzodiazepines. Parents dip the test into a cup of urine, and results appear within minutes.

Matt Muir, a 17-year-old high school senior from Michigan, objects to his mother’s recent purchase of home drug tests. Muir says his occasional marijuana use causes no problems in his life and his mother shouldn’t worry. His grades are fine, he said. He’s already been accepted into three good universities and he’ll soon be living on his own. He doesn’t smoke every day and never before school, and he’s not turning to other “harder” drugs, he said.

“I think her fears are overdrawn and exaggerated,” he said.

When his mother tried to force him to urinate in a cup while she stood in the bathroom facing the wall, he decided he would rather admit to his drug use than go through the embarrassment.

“I’ve given a lot of thought to what she’s supposed to do,” Muir said. “It’s really tough. I guess look the other way but not approve of it. It strikes me that parents that are OK with it are not good people.”

Some groups say home drug testing can harm relationships with children.

The Drug Policy Alliance, a national nonprofit agency that promotes an overhaul of the nation’s approach to drug problems, says parental testing tears at the bond between children and adults.

“It can have consequences of breaking down communication, of creating rebellion, breaking down relationships of trust,” said Jennifer Kern, a research associate with the office of legal affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance.

Drug testing of teens should be done by medical professionals who can better interpret test results and refer parents to appropriate resources if necessary, Kern said.