"They were literally caught on the horns of a dilemma," said Graham Boyd, director of the ACLU's Drug Law Reform Project, adding that teachers' hopes of getting a decent wage rested with them agreeing to random drug testing.

The ACLU has been contacted by 50 to 100 Hawaii teachers upset about the prospect of random drug testing and seeking information on what they can do about it, Boyd told The Maui News on Tuesday.

The ACLU will hold a series of meetings statewide on the issue, with the first scheduled for 5:30 to 7 p.m. Thursday in Maui Community College's library conference room. The public is invited.

In May, 8,500 out of Hawaii's 13,500 teachers voted on a new contract, and 61.3 percent voted in favor, with 38.2 percent voting against it. Teachers won a 4 percent pay raise in each year of their new two-year contract, which went into effect July 1.

On Tuesday afternoon, Attorney General Mark Bennett disputed Boyd's "hostage" characterization of the union's agreement with the state.

"The agreement was the product of collective bargaining between the union and the governor," Bennett said. "The idea that anybody forced the HSTA to agree to anything is just untrue."

Boyd said it's common for teachers in other states to have drug testing if they are impaired and suspected of drug use, but to have all teachers tested for drugs as a normal part of their job is "very unusual."

The move toward drug testing of teachers appeared to stem from some highly publicized arrests of teachers for drug use over the last year, he said.

Random drug testing is expensive and ineffective, Boyd said.

"There's not thousands of dollars floating around to do drug testing that's ineffective," he said, adding that money would be better spent on books, classrooms and teachers.

The ACLU's position is that "drug testing gets an 'F' for effectiveness," Boyd said.

The National Academy of Sciences has done a study showing random drug testing has not been effective in reducing drug use, he said.

For example, while urine tests are effective for picking up the recent use of marijuana, the use of methamphetamine, heroin or cocaine can be undetectable after a day or two, he said.

If anyone is caught, it's the person with "marijuana use over the summer vacation and not meth use over the weekend," Boyd said.

He maintained that testing for drug use for teachers when there's no suspicion that they're using harmful substances amounts to a violation of the teachers' Fourth Amendment right to privacy.

Random drug testing has been found to be acceptable for employees of other professions involving public safety, such as nuclear power plant workers, prison guards, police officers and those involved in public transportation, Boyd said.

But he said teachers don't fall in the same category of workers whose momentary lapse of judgment would pose a significant risk to public safety.

Boyd said random drug testing of teachers also would send a poor civics lesson to students.

"The government is treating teachers like criminals," he said. "That teaches a very bad lesson in basic civics."

Bennett said he disagrees with Boyd's basic premise that teachers shouldn't be subjected to drug testing, since it was something that was agreed to in the course of collective bargaining.

"There's a different legal standard of what may be unilaterally imposed by government versus what may be agreed to in collective bargaining," he said.

Also, Bennett said, the state Department of Education is working on a plan to implement the drug-testing policy, which is not expected to go into effect until mid-2008.

The details of the plan would be presented to the teachers union and worked out, he said.

Before mounting legal opposition to random drug testing, the ACLU should "wait and see what the actual plan is to be put in effect," Bennett said.

"I think the idea of making sure of safety in public schools is an important one and a legitimate subject for collective bargaining," he said. "A lot of teachers feel that this is a good thing."