BASKING RIDGE, N.J.

“I don’t want it misunderstood,” said Lynn Evelyn, 52, the mother of three teenage girls. “I’m not in favor of kids using drugs or alcohol.

“My approach is to tell them: ‘I don’t want you to do it. I think it’s absolutely the wrong kind of behavior for adolescents to engage in. But if you do choose at some point to experiment’  and my girls are all social  I talk about how, in our own family, there’s a history of alcohol dependency. They know my older brother died of drug addiction.”

Her oldest daughter is now a college freshman, but last year, when she was a senior, a few times she came home after drinking heavily, the mother said, and they talked. “I made it clear this upset me,” Ms. Evelyn said. “ I didn’t expect this to be a regular thing.”

The mother supports what’s called “suspicion-based testing”  testing students if they appear to be impaired at school. “Kids shouldn’t go to school drunk or high,” she said. “It’s not just the school’s right to test, it’s the school’s responsibility.”