Rise of Drug Dogs in Schools Reflects Dilemma

Jan. 31 -- Colorado principal Mary White never thought her school would have a potentially serious drug problem.

But slowly, White, a second-year principal at Longmont High School, saw warning signs. In individual conversations, parents and students began to talk about drug and alcohol use among the kids at her school. Then, White said, late last spring, a former student admitted to selling "quite a bit of marijuana" to current students.

"That was just a slap in the face, a cold realization of what's happening in the building," White said. "We had used the traditional methods of drug education. We had brought in speakers to talk to the parents and the kids but that did not seem to be enough. The message just wasn't getting through."

To keep the problem from growing, White decided to try a controversial, but rapidly growing, means of interdiction: using dogs to sniff out drugs in students' lockers.

An Old and Difficult Problem

Administrators like White have been facing similar dilemmas for years, and more and more of them have been trying dogs to deal with drugs in their hallways — more than half of all students have tried drugs at least once by the time they were in 12th grade, according an annual study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

While there isn't a central database recording schools that use drug dogs, firms, like Interquest Group, Inc., a Houston-based company that trains and contracts drug-detecting dogs, have thrived on the business. Interquest started sending dogs to Texas-based schools 24 years ago. Now, it contracts dogs to 1,200 school districts (and 8,000 campus locations) in 19 states.

"What the dogs do is that they validate the presence of a problem," said Michael Ferdinand, vice president of Interquest. "They deter those who would think of bringing drugs or firearms on a campus. Those who see the dogs conduct these searches — they don't know when the searches are coming, and they have an investment to protect. They just don't think it's worth it [bringing drugs, alcohol, or firearms into a school]."