ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : A Proposal That Smells

Trustees of the Newport-Mesa Unified School District should turn thumbs down next week on a proposal to use drug-sniffing dogs on two high school campuses.

For one thing, the schools at which the Costa Mesa Police Department has proposed using the dogs both are in Costa Mesa; the two high schools in Newport Beach would be spared. That is unfair and seems to say that students from wealthier communities get better treatment.

According to one district trustee, there is no serious drug problem in any of the schools. Then why use the dogs?

Police dogs on campus, sniffing for drugs in lockers and cars in the parking lot, suggest a chilling police-state atmosphere, with students stripped of privacy.

It is true that drugs are a plague and that students should be discouraged from using them. And police and school officials stressed that the dogs would be used when students were not around, to prevent any attacks by the animals and anxiety attacks by students afraid of dogs.

But using the dogs to send a message to students is wrong. Drug education classes and reminders of the law and penalties for violating it are better ways to help turn students away from drugs.

Several years ago, school authorities in Orange allowed police to unload children from school buses so dogs could sniff for drugs. Nothing was found and no arrests were made. The uproar that rightly ensued led officials to call off the dogs after using them once. Newport-Mesa should not use them at all.