John Whitehead's Commentary
Turning Parents Into Police Breaks the Trust Relationship
In Voorhees, the city provides free kits to parents whereby they can test their teenager's saliva for alcohol content. The kit works by soaking a cotton swab with the son's or daughter's saliva and then inserting the swab into the base of a special unit that uses a purple bar to show alcohol content, much like a home thermometer.
Parents who use the kit appear to be within their rights. Even the ACLU, notoriously hostile to even the most seemingly insignificant challenges to constitutional freedoms, admits that the tests are most likely legal when administered by a parent to a child. But, as the saying goes, what is legal is not always right and may, at times, even be harmful.
One of the most important and delicate bonds between a parent and teenager is trust. And nothing is more likely to break this fragile bond than turning parents into police in their own homes. Indeed, using such a test is the equivalent of a parent telling his or her child, "I believe you're lying to me." And what happens when a child tests positive for alcohol, no matter how small the amount? Do the parents lock their daughter in her room? Do they turn their son over to the police?
If a parent cannot simply ask a teenager whether he or she has been drinking -- and trust the answer -- a much deeper problem exists than just underage drinking (presumably if a teenager is actually drunk, the parent won't need the test to figure this out). That family is already in trouble. And using the saliva tester is like placing a bandage on a hemorrhaging wound. It will simply exacerbate the problem, not lead to a real solution.
Supporters of the testing program point to national statistics to bolster their case. Clearly, the numbers are troubling. The Washington Post reported that one in five deaths of drivers younger than 21 involves alcohol, and 42 percent of high school seniors reported riding with a driver who had been drinking. It's numbers like these that lead organizations such as MADD to support the saliva testing initiative. Frank Winters, a New Jersey police chief and national board member of MADD, says that he fully supports the program because it will "result in awareness for someone."
But teenagers who know that their parents have the kit -- and even Voorhees police officers advise parents to warn their children in advance that they are armed with the saliva tester -- may simply not go home. They'll figure out ways to avoid their parents when they've been drinking -- sort of the twenty-first century version of sneaking out of the window at night. This, of course, will worsen an already bad situation.
Either way, the trust relationship that is so essential to the traditional family unit will be irrevocably broken -- by the parents if they actually use the tester and by the teenagers if they refuse to submit to the saliva test. We all want safer roads, and none of us want our children driving while drunk. But expediency of the saliva test is not the answer.
In the end, the best solution is the one that's been relied on by wise parents since long before the saliva tester was invented: simple, old-fashioned communication. In this case, the right thing for parents to do is simply talk to their teenagers about the dangers of alcohol abuse -- and rely on a relationship built on trust to shield them from its dangers. Otherwise, the family unit, as we have known it, will continue to slide into oblivion.
ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
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