THE New York Timesreports that America has opened up a new front in its "war on drugs": middle school. In Milford, Pennsylvania, for example, Delaware Valley Middle School has instituted a policy of mandatory drug tests for students wishing to participate in clubs or sports. So when a 12-year-old girl wanted to join the scrapbooking club, she was told to hand over her urine first. Her parents sued the school district. But while this may seem like an anomolous invasion of privacy, according to the Times, "States with middle schools that conduct drug testing include Florida, Alabama, Missouri, West Virginia, Arkansas, Ohio, New Jersey and Texas."

America has become a country where drug testing is common. The federal government set the precedent for workplace testing when Ronald Reagan declared the goal of a drug-free federal workplace in 1986. In 2011, well over half of businesses required all job candidates to prove they were clean, while another 10% required drug testing of certain candidates, according to the Society for Human Resource Management (via the Huffington Post).

Asking anyone to pee in a cup and hand his urine over to a stranger is an invasion of privacy. If you want to perform emergency surgery or fly a commercial aeroplane, this intrusion may be warranted to protect the public safety. But American society is rampant with drug tests for academic and professional activities—joining the student newspaper, stocking shelves at a supermarket, selling real estate, computer programming—that are completely unaffected by an employee's preference for a joint outside of the office. In fact, there is little reliable evidence that drug testing has any positive effect on companies' productivity, safety or bottom line.

When it comes to the middle-schoolers, drug testing may even have a negative impact. Local school officials reckon that preventing drug users from participating in sports or stamp collecting will discourage students from doing drugs. But some students will simply stop doing the more wholesome activity so as to avoid detection of their drug use.

Underlying all of this is the alarmist way in which Americans view drug use. The Times writes, "There are no known instances of a middle school student testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs like steroids or human growth hormone. The few positive results among middle school students have been attributed to marijuana, officials said, and even those cases are rare." The premise of the policy then seems to be that if teenagers smoke pot, they cannot simultaneously be good students, committed athletes, or aspiring artists, journalists or lawyers. That's silly.

If the president of the United States was a regular pot smoker in high school and college, why do public-school officials pretend that one hit off a joint will turn a good student into a lost soul? According to Time magazine, 42% of Americans admit to having tried marijuana, and 16% have tried cocaine, so these anti-drug policies are clearly being administered by some people who have smoked pot themselves. Kids know that. The most substantial effect of such measures may be to convince kids that their adult authority figures are hypocritical bullies. But at least they will be prepared for the arbitrary obstacles of later life.