THE COST OF FEEL-GOOD LEGISLATION

Gov. Mike Foster's effort to impose random drug testing on elected officials
has run its silly course. Now it's time to pay the piper. To no one's
surprise, the U.S. Supreme Court has rejected an attempt by the Foster
administration to reverse lower court rulings that a 1997 law requiring
mandatory drug testing for elected officials is unconstitutional.

In 1998, a trial judge held that the drug testing statute violates the U.S.
Constitution's Fourth Amendment bar against unreasonable search and seizure.
The Louisiana statute, passed by the Legislature at Foster's urging, never
was implemented because of challenges by state Reps. Rev. Avery Alexander,
who is now deceased, and Arthur Morrell. The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of
Appeals upheld the trial court's ruling in December.

We have predicted the demise of the Louisiana bill from the beginning, but
we take no pleasure in chiding Foster or lawmakers when they act like fools.
We know that the public always pays the real price. Sure enough, it's time
again for taxpayers to foot the bill. Not including the recent application
to the U.S. Supreme Court, the state must pay $56,563.21 in attorneys' fees,
says a spokesperson for the state Attorney General's Office.

In this case, those fees go to counsel for the American Civil Liberties
Union (ACLU) and the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws
(NORML). Not even those organizations sounded particularly pleased about the
outcome. "The Louisiana Legislature consistently spits in the face of the
Constitution, and inevitably ends up wasting the taxpayers' money in the
process," says William Rittenberg, a NORML Legal Committee attorney.

There is a always a price for feel-good legislation, and it's always paid
with money that could have been put to better use elsewhere. The whole
episode makes us wonder if we'd be better off testing our politicians for
signs of intelligence rather than drug use.