Merchant Discounts Backed to Keep Youths Drug-Free : Antelope Valley: Similar use of ‘positive peer pressure’ elsewhere has raised civil liberties concerns.

An Antelope Valley community activist is lining up political and business leaders behind a proposed anti-drug program, the first of its kind in California, in which merchants would give discounts and other rewards to young people who do not use illegal drugs and submit to random urine tests to prove it.

The backers recognize that similar programs have stirred controversy elsewhere.

The man behind the idea is Billy Pricer, a retired deputy sheriff and minister who has founded several volunteer programs this year to combat a fast-growing gang and drug problem in the high desert.

“There is such a thing as positive peer pressure and I believe this will help the kids,” Pricer said. “For once we are targeting the kids that are making an honest effort to keep their lives clean.”

A wide range of Antelope Valley leaders--including city council members, developers and law enforcement officials--are working with Pricer to raise funds and recruit businesses to participate in the program. It is modeled on Drug Free Youth, a 3-year-old effort begun in Texas that now involves 16,000 students in four states, according to its founders.

To date there have been no such programs in California, said Bob Deguchi of the state Office of Criminal Justice Planning in Sacramento.

In Texas’ Smith County, teen-agers who submit to the voluntary drug tests with parental consent are issued a photo identification card that brings them price reductions of up to 50% at movie theaters and other businesses, as well as summer jobs. Parties and other activities celebrate their membership in what amounts to a drug-free club. The program is administered by a board of directors--including representatives of law enforcement, schools, the medical community and others--and works with a student advisory board.

About 93% of the students at Whitehouse High School outside Tyler, Tex., belong to the program, and the T-shirts and identification cards are a familiar sight around town, Whitehouse counselor Mary Beth Fitzgerald said.

“It’s a lot of fun,” said April Foscue, a 17-year-old Whitehouse senior who joined DFY as a sophomore. “The real popular people are in it and that shows the younger kids that it’s OK not to take drugs.”

Antelope Valley leaders predict an enthusiastic response because their community has become alarmed at the speed with which crime and drug activity accompanied population growth in the past three years.

“We want kids to recognize that it pays to be drug-free,” said developer Gregg Anderson of Rancho Vista Estates. “We hope that every kid will want this card.”

Pricer, who runs a hot line for people with gang- and drug-related problems and a “scared straight” program in which ex-convicts counsel teen-agers, plans to begin offering no-charge drug tests by October at the offices of his organization, the United Community Action Network.

Pricer hopes to have students sign up through the Antelope Valley Union High School District. School Supt. Kenneth Brummel said Monday that he likes the idea and will present the proposal to the school board.

Four local McDonald’s restaurants have offered to provide coupons to participants, and pledges of support have come from bowling alleys, record stores, video arcades and movie theaters.

But supporters acknowledge that drug testing is fraught with controversy. The program has caused disputes in Texas and Oklahoma, with civil libertarians and students and parents complaining that students’ privacy was being violated by peer pressure and that students who did not take the tests were being stigmatized. An effort to make drug tests mandatory for students in extracurricular activities in the Tyler schools was dropped after intense debate, officials said.

When asked if the 7% of Whitehouse students who do not take the test feel uncomfortable, Fitzgerald said that was the desired effect.

“Yes, it does make them feel uncomfortable,” Fitzgerald said. “This is positive peer pressure.”

Joe Cook, president of the American Civil Liberties Union in Dallas, said: “We’re just suspicious of the effect on civil liberties. It’s a program fraught with serious difficulties. The occurrence of a false positive on a test could have a devastating effect on a child.”

Such problems can be avoided in Lancaster and Palmdale with careful planning and broad-based community support, Pricer said. And he and others emphasized that they want to keep the program strictly voluntary.

“I don’t believe you are ever violating privacy when it’s an entirely volunteer program,” Pricer said. “It’s like joining a club, clubs have rules and standards. . . . We have had negative peer pressure on kids for a long time and the ACLU never jumps on that.”

In an effort to make sure that tests are accurate, students whose tests indicate drug use will be automatically retested as they have been in other states, Pricer said. Those who show positive on a second test will lose their membership privileges and be offered drug counseling, Pricer said.

Palmdale Councilwoman Janice Hamm said she feels the proposal will shift attention away from the gang members and drug dealers who have dominated headlines in the area during the past year.

“The ones who get the exposure are the bad kids,” she said. “The good kids don’t get any attention.”