ABC Afterschool Specials (TV Series)

Testing Dirty (1990)

Mary Pat Gleason: Mrs. Rupert

Quotes 

• [first lines] 

  Steve : ...You're sitting on your hands! Nothing is being done, nothing at all! There's a war going on out there. We had a kid from this district die last week from an overdose!

  Jane Horowitz (school board) : You make it sound like the school board doesn't see a drug problem. We do. Things aren't going to change until and unless the buyers - our kids - stop buying drugs. That's why we have a drug education program.

  Steve : Drug education isn't good enough, because it sacrifices today's kids for tomorrow's! Our position is very simple: Use drugs, and you're out. Period!

  Jane Horowitz (school board) : Are you asking us to test, at random, all our students for drug use?

  Frank Harlan (school board) : What should we do about the kids who test positive? How do you propose to help them?

  Mrs. Rupert : Our first priority should be the kids who are clean and struggling to make it. You help them by weeding out the kids who take drugs and/or pressure others to do the same.

  Coach Stanley Daniels : It takes guts to stay clean when all your friends aren't. A school-wide drug test could give non-users just the excuse they need to say no and mean it.

  Mrs. Rupert : While you talk, who's going to save these kids who are being offered drugs from every which way but up?

  School Board #3 : The best way to help them is for parents and teachers to learn the signs of drug use and THEN call for a test, if and when they've noticed something suspicious. There are rights issues we have to consider, after all.

  Mrs. Rupert : What rights are violated if lives are saved?

  School Board #3 : That's just it: violating legal rights can just as easily destroy lives as save them.

  Jane Horowitz (school board) : Steve, how much will these tests cost, and how accurate are they? And how reputable is the lab you're proposing we use?

  School Board #3 : Also, if somebody tests positive, who all has access to that information?

  Jane Horowitz (school board) : Since there aren't any national regulations yet, let's examine - thoroughly - the new testing program over at the Whitney school district, before acting here.

  Steve : Hey... When your tail's on fire, you don't talk about it! You sit on it, hard! Come on, let's put a drug-testing program in place TONIGHT... before another of our kids dies!