Aided in part by in-school advertising, makers of home drug-testing kits are experiencing tremendous growth as more parents turn to testing their kids, Knight-Ridder reported March 28.

Web-based companies like Testmyteen.com and drugteststrips.com are selling drug tests by the case to parents like Suzanne Fugarino, whose teen daughter was caught in school with a crack pipe last year and later admitted using the drug. "I tell my daughter, 'If you want to go out tonight, you're going to pee in a cup first,'" said Fugarino.

Some schools are helping to market the tests by sending brochures home to parents and hanging promotional banners in hallways. Debra Auer, co-owner of Express Drug Screening, which sells test kits to parents, says business has been "awesome"; Drugteststrips.com says sales have quadrupled in the past five years.

"From a parent's perspective, it's the most empowering thing in the world," said Kim Hildreth, who tests her own children as well as selling home testing kits at www.drugtestyourteen.com. "You're lying awake at night, staring at the ceiling, worried to death all the time. You catch them in little fibs. You don't know if they're where they say they are. You worry. There's no reason for that."

Mason Duchatschek, owner of www.testmyteen.com, is pitching parental testing to schools as an alternative to random testing of students, which is more controversial. But parental testing, too, has its critics. "It can have consequences of breaking down communication, of creating rebellion, breaking down relationships of trust," said Jennifer Kern of the Drug Policy Alliance.