Natchez &8212; Drug and alcohol education starts early at every school in the Miss-Lou.

Health, physical education and science classes cover the topics annually, and special speakers, awareness days, clubs and projects reinforce the consequences of using drugs and alcohol.

At the middle school and high school levels at all the schools, police drug dogs visit regularly &8212; the students don&8217;t know when &8212; and do searches of lockers, backpacks and the parking lots.

If drugs or paraphernalia are found on campus at any time, police and parents are called.

At the three Natchez private schools, principals can do drug tests on any student upon suspicion, and Trinity Episcopal and Adams County Christian School work through a random drug testing program over the course of the school year.

Both schools say their testing policy is a crutch for students facing peer pressure to lean on, by saying they can&8217;t do drugs because they&8217;ll be tested.

But students at both schools say they know the tests aren&8217;t reliable and know how to cheat the system.

ACCS Headmaster John Gray said he&8217;s had two positive tests in the school&8217;s first year of testing.

Cathedral&8217;s Principal Pat Sanguinetti and Trinity&8217;s Delecia Carey both said they&8217;ve recommended private drug testing to individual parents based on their child&8217;s behavior at school.

Carey once had the Mississippi Highway Patrol come to a school dance and test everyone for alcohol on a Breathalyzer, but she said she can&8217;t feasibly do this for every dance.

She no longer lets students use class treasury money to rent charter buses for dance transportation.

&8220;That&8217;s a cover-up for teenage drinking,&8221; she said. &8220;We realized this is pseudo sanctioned drinking.&8221;

A solution that&8217;s worked at Trinity and at Cathedral, both principals said, is having dances immediately after a Friday night football game or basketball game. Students don&8217;t have time to leave campus, buy alcohol and get drunk, they said. Both said the method works for dances except the spring prom when there&8217;s no game.

Some public schools in the area have chosen not to have prom or other dances on school property, because they can&8217;t control the drinking.