Clinton: Put Teen Drug Test On Driving Exam

President Clinton said Saturday that teenagers should have to pass a drug test before receiving driver’s licenses, and he instructed administration officials to report back to him in 90 days with a plan, including possible legislation, to make such a practice standard across the country.

Clinton announced the anti-drug initiative in his weekly Saturday radio address, in which he also announced that the administration would issue a final rule Monday putting into effect a law designed to stop drunken driving by young people.

The law requires states to make it illegal for anyone under 21 to drive with any alcohol in their blood. States will have two years to enact the “zero-tolerance law” or risk a portion of their federal highway money.

Citing the anti-alcohol measure as a model, Clinton said, “Our message should be simple: No drugs or no driver’s license.”

Details of the anti-drug proposal were sketchy, but it would apply to would-be drivers under age 18. White House aides said they assumed that implementing the plan would require legislation, but none has yet been drafted. And they said it was not clear whether Clinton’s direction to the states to impose drug testing would come as a direct order or through a system of threats and incentives - such as tying a portion of federal highway funds to a state’s willingness to implement testing.

Arthur Spitzer, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s District of Columbia branch, said the move was “the latest wretched excess in the war against drugs,” and questioned the logic for subjecting teens to different rules than other drivers.

If the drug testing is done only once, he noted, a teen would simply have to avoid use in the weeks prior to getting a driver’s license, making Clinton’s idea a triumph of “symbolism over reality.”

“We just think it’s one more example of this drug mania gone crazy,” Spitzer said. “Kids shouldn’t be using drugs but there’s lots of other things kids shouldn’t be doing, and depriving somebody of the ability to drive may mean depriving them of the ability to go to school, get a job, support their families or do the kinds of things that prevent them from doing drugs.”

He added, “If we saw a viable legal challenge we would certainly want to pursue it.”

Bob Dole’s spokesman, Nelson Warfield, responded to Clinton’s proposal, saying “the policy is right … the timing, however, is suspect.”

“After allowing teen drug use to more than double while he has been in the White House, his announcement today just proves that Bill Clinton would test positive for political cynicism. He’s guilty of CWI, campaigning while impersonating a moderate.”

Clinton has been under assault by Dole and the Republicans on the drug issue for weeks, since his administration reported in late August that marijuana smoking among American teenagers had jumped 141 percent from 1992 to 1995 and that overall teenage drug use had more than doubled.

Saturday, Clinton said that even though drug use by teenagers had increased, “all the evidence is that 90 percent of our children are drug free.”

“They are doing the right thing,” he said. “They are not experimenting.”

The president added, “We are asking them, the 90 percent who are drug free, to be responsible enough to participate in this drug-testing program to help us identify the 10 percent who are on the brink of getting in trouble and get them away from drugs before it’s too late.

Clinton assigned General Barry McCaffrey, the administration’s director of drug policy, and Frederico F. Pena, the secretary of transportation, to report back to him in 90 days - well after the election - with the plan to require all teenagers to pass a drug test to get a license.

Since it is the states that issue driver’s licenses, White House officials said that the president could, if he decided it was necessary, propose legislation requiring states to have such a program in order to receive their full share of highway money.

Last year, Congress took such a step, at Clinton’s urging, on teenagers and alcohol.

Under the new law on “zero tolerance” for drinking and driving by young people, states that do not have such a law within two years risk 5 percent of their federal highway money the first year and 10 percent in each subsequent year.

The rule being issued on Monday spells out how stringent states must be to comply with the law.

The Supreme Court has consistently ruled on the government’s side in drug testing cases, most recently in a 1995 decision that upheld random drug testing for student athletes at an Oregon high school.

But the rulings have been narrowly tailored to the particular circumstances and have provoked sharp dissents from some of the court’s more conservative members.