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The Springfield Police Department is offering free online vouchers for home drug testing kits. It’s part of an effort to cut down on the number of teen drug users. KSMU’s Samuel Crowe spoke with both the police and Test My Teen, the company that’s donating the kits, and has this report.
Corporal Matt Brown of the Springfield Police Department says the home test kits give kids one more good excuse to not use drugs: they can just say that their parents are testing them. He says this excuse will help them from succumbing to peer pressure.
“Just the fact that they are saying ‘no’ is often brought about with ridicule and the kids are made fun of, made to feel like that right decision is a wrong decision. So when they say ‘No I can’t, my parents test me,’ that is a lot of an easier out putting the responsibility on their parents than on themselves. It’s been very effective, a lot of kids tell us that works for them,” Brown said.
Mason Duchatschek of Test My Teen says the company has made an initial donation to the Missouri Police Chief’s Association that allows the company to give away at least $5,000 worth of free home drug test kit vouchers to any school district, police and sheriff’s department in the state that won’t waste them. He says that $5,000 is only a starting point.
“If Springfield can use $50,000, $100,000, whatever they need, they can get it. We just started them up with $5,000, but really our goal is to give every kid a socially acceptable excuse,” Duchatschek said.
Duchatschek says the drug test kits are of lab quality accuracy and are being used by major corporations for drug screenings every day. He says the urine tests come equipped with a temperature strip and detectors to check for whether the sample was tampered with to alter the results.
Duchatschek says a big draw for the home test kits is building a level of trust between parent and child.
“If I’m your son, and I value our relationship, I don’t want to do anything that’s going to jeopardize your trust in me. But if I think I can get away with something without getting caught, then I’m not really putting our relationship at risk if I think I can get away with it. So I’ll do what I want,” Duchatschek said.
For more information on how to obtain a voucher, visit the link on our website, ksmu.org. For KSMU News, I’m Samuel Crowe.
Samuel hails from St. Louis, Missouri, by way of Lima, Peru, where he studied abroad in 2010. He is a media studies major at MSU with minors in Spanish and international marketing. In his spare time, you can find him biking around town, playing ultimate frisbee with the Missouri State club team, exploring the great outdoors, cooking, tending to his garden, or practicing his Spanish.
