dissenting.
A majority of our Court today holds that it is permissible under our State Constitution to subject public school students to mass suspicionless drug testing. I respectfully dissent.
The desire to wage war on drugs should not be permitted to coarsen our sensitivity to constitutional protections. The requirement that searches be reasonable and, at a minimum, based on some particularized suspicion is a constitutional mandate that applies to juveniles as well as adults. The protections of our State Constitution should not be shut out of our schoolhouses. In my view, the majority’s application of the special-needs doctrine to support the school drug-testing program at issue here seriously erodes the traditional jurisprudential analysis governing searches and seizures. Simply put, a routine regimen of random drug testing of students who wish to avail themselves of the educational and social enhancements offered through extracurricular school activities ought not be permitted — certainly not on the showing made by this school district that in no way ties any drug use to the group targeted for suspicionless testing. The record is devoid of any special need to permit this random drug testing.
The Court’s holding will reverberate throughout the State’s system of public school education, and result in shearing an estimated quarter of a million New Jersey public school students of the right to be free of suspicionless drug testing. For those students, state constitutional protection against government-initi*620ated suspicionless searches of their bodily fluids is now conditioned on their giving up the opportunity to participate in extracurricular activities. That is the wrong lesson for our system of public school education to teach the young citizens entrusted to its care. As Justice Brandéis recognized, “[o]ur Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example.” Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 485, 48 S.Ct. 564, 575, 72 L.Ed. 944, 960 (1928).
I would conclude, as did the Honorable Naomi Eichen in her thoughtful and compelling dissent below, that the expansive random drug-testing program of the Hunterdon Central Regional High School Board of Education (Hunterdon Central) violates Article I, paragraph 7 of the New Jersey Constitution. Joye v. Hunterdon Cent. Reg’l High Sch., 353 N.J.Super. 600, 615, 803 A.2d 706 (App.Div.2002).
I.
This case involves a challenge to a program of the Hunterdon Central Regional Board of Education that results in requiring approximately eighty percent of the student population at this regional high school to submit to random drug testing. Specifically, the program requires all ninth through twelfth graders who wish to participate in extracurricular sports, clubs, and other activities, as well as those students who apply for school parking privileges, to submit to routine, random drug testing.1 That protocol of drug testing was proposed as an enhancement to the school district’s existing suspicion-based testing program. Indeed, *621the district’s efforts to deter students from drug and alcohol use are multifaceted. School administrators engage in searches of student lockers and conduct “dog-sniffing sweeps” in conjunction with the county prosecutor. Furthermore, drug and alcohol education is a required part of the curriculum and a student assistance program provides counseling for students and their families.
In July 1997, the school board adopted a policy that authorized the routine random drug testing of student athletes. As justification for the policy the board cited a survey of the student body that it commissioned during the 1996-1997 school year, although the record does not disclose any connection between the survey results and the student athlete population targeted for testing. What the record does reveal is that the survey was funded by Roche Diagnostic Systems (Roche), a New Jersey pharmaceutical company that produces drug-testing kits, and was administered by the Rocky Mountain Behavioral Science Institute, Inc. (RMBSI). Students were surveyed using a self-administered, paper-and-pencil questionnaire that required approximately thirty-five minutes to complete. Coordinators of the survey selected students to “represent” the Hunterdon Central student body, but it is unclear how that selection was made. Ultimately, 557 students, or approximately twenty-four percent of students enrolled at Hunter-don Central, were surveyed. The sample population consisted of 180 freshman, 123 sophomores, 145 juniors, and 109 seniors.
In general, the questionnaire inquired about history, current frequency, and intensity of drug and alcohol use. Data also was collected on student perceptions of drug availability at the school. The questionnaire contained controls to ensure accuracy and detect inconsistent or exaggerated responses. Approximately forty consistency checks were performed on each survey. As a result, one percent of the students tested were classified as “inconsistent responders” and their responses were excluded from the data compilations.
The anonymous survey results were categorized according to whether students ever had tried alcohol or various drugs, had *622used such substances in the previous twelve months, and had used them in the last thirty days. Students were categorized as low, medium, and high drug users based on their survey responses. Low drug users included students who had tried a drug, were light users of alcohol, or whose drug use was negligible. High drug users included poly-substance, stimulant, heavy marijuana, and heavy alcohol users. (Presumably, terms such as “light” or “heavy” substance use were quantified on the questionnaire itself.)
The 1996-1997 survey results indicated, among other things, that 37% of freshman, 45% of sophomores, 46% of juniors, and 54% of seniors had used alcohol in the last month. Those who used marijuana in that month included 7% of freshman, 15% of sophomores, 15% of juniors, and 19% of seniors. Percentages of students who had ingested other substances during the last month, including, but not limited to, cocaine, barbiturates, stimulants, inhalants, and hallucinogens, ranged from 0 to 8%. A followup survey conducted during the 1999-2000 school year revealed lower percentages in these categories. Those latter results indicated that 21% of freshman, 38% of sophomores, 47% of juniors, and 52% of seniors consumed alcohol in the previous month. Marijuana use in the previous month was recorded at 2% of freshman, 10% of sophomores, 13% of juniors, and 13% of seniors. Use of other substances ranged from 0 to 6%.2
The new policy of requiring random drug tests for student athletes was not accepted universally in the Hunterdon Central community. Parents and students spoke out against it. A rift developed between the board of education and the school’s athletic booster club. The board responded to the concerns by appointing *623a “Drag Testing Task Force” charged with evaluating the district’s current programs of drag testing.
The Task Force issued a report in November 1998, recommending that student athletes not be singled out for random drag testing. Instead, the report suggested that the program of random drug testing be expanded to apply to all students who participate in extracurricular activities. In addition, the Task Force recommended that the grant of parking privileges to students be conditioned on submitting to random drug testing. The Task Force’s report stated plainly its intention to pattern the recommended reach of a drag-testing program on developing federal case law concerning Fourth Amendment challenges to random drag-testing programs. The report stated that the Board had wished to test randomly a broader group of students when it established its initial program of testing student athletes, but believed that the facts in Vernonia School District 47J v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646, 115 S.Ct. 2386, 132 L.Ed.2d 564 (1995), constrained broader action at that time. According to the Task Force, a more recent decision from the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, Todd v. Rush County Schools, 133 F.3d 984 (1998), supported an expansion of the school’s program of random testing. Notably, the Task Force report did not suggest that the surveys taken of Hunterdon Central students indicated any particularized drag or alcohol problem among students participating in extracurricular activities, or among students who drove motor vehicles to school and parked on the grounds. Nor has that assertion been advanced in these proceedings.
On January 18, 2000, the Board approved expansion of its program of random drag testing to include the student groups identified in the Task Force report. Plaintiffs, three parents on behalf of their student children attending Hunterdon Central at the time of the filing of the action, brought the instant challenge to the constitutionality of that expanded program. The late Honorable Robert E. Guterl held that the program violated Article I, *624paragraph 7 of the New Jersey Constitution and issued a permanent injunction prohibiting its implementation.
The Appellate Division, in a divided opinion, reversed the holding that the drug-testing program was unconstitutional and remanded for further proceedings. Joye, supra, 353 N.J. Super, at 615, 803 A.2d 706. This appeal is before us as of right based on Judge Eiehen’s dissent. Judge Eiehen agreed with the trial court “that all of the targeted students had an undiminished privacy expectation in their excretory functions and that in the absence of any showing of a particularized special need for the testing” the program of random drug testing was violative of Article I, paragraph 7 of the New Jersey Constitution. Id. at 615, 803 A.2d 706.
II.
There is no question but that a urine test to detect drug and alcohol use by students constitutes a “search” subject to Article I, paragraph 7 protections. On that the parties agree. Nor are the school district’s procedures for specimen collection contested by plaintiffs. This appeal involves a single issue: whether it is reasonable to subject these targeted public school pupils (to wit, students who participate in extracurricular activities or who seek school parking permits) to the school district’s program of random and routine drug testing.
A.
Any discussion of student searches must start with New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325, 105 S.Ct. 733, 83 L.Ed.2d 720 (1985). In T.L.O., “special needs” permitted dispensing with the normal warrant and probable-cause requirements and allowed substitution of a reasonableness test because school officials demonstrated a justified and immediate need to act to enforce school rules to maintain an orderly school environment without the constraint of those two requirements. T.L.O. was caught smoking in a school lavatory and was brought before the assistant vice principal for questioning. Id. at 328, 105 S.Ct. at 735, 83 L.Ed.2d at 726. *625When she denied ever having smoked, the principal searched her purse and found an offending pack of cigarettes, as well as drug paraphernalia. Ibid., 105 S.Ct. at 736, 83 L.Ed.2d at 726. In connection with delinquency charges later filed against her, T.L.O. claimed the school official’s search of her purse violated the Fourth Amendment. Id. at 329, 105 S.Ct. at 736, 83 L.Ed.2d at 726. The United States Supreme Court agreed, but explained that requiring a warrant and individualized suspicion at a level that satisfied probable cause was not required for searches for evidence of a school rule violation. Id. at 340-41,105 S.Ct. at 742, 83 L.Ed.2d at 733-34. Instead, the Court applied a two-part test:
[F]irst, one must consider “whether the ... action was justified at its inception” ...; second, one must determine whether the search as actually conducted “was reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first placet!” Under ordinary circumstances, a search of a student by a teacher or other school official will be “justified at its inception” when there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that the search will turn up evidence that the student has violated or is violating either the law or the rules of the school. Such a search will be permissible in its scope when the measures adopted are reasonably related to the objectives of the search and not excessively intrusive in light of the age and sex of the student and the nature of the infraction.
[Id. at 341-42, 105 S.Ct. at 742-43, 83 L.Ed.2d at 734-35 (citations omitted).]
The Court cautioned, however, that a reasonableness standard may not invade the interests of students any more “than is necessary to achieve the legitimate end of preserving order in the schools.” Id. at 343, 105 S.Ct. at 743, 83 L.Ed.2d at 735-36. Justice Blaekmun underscored that warning in a concurring opinion that introduced the phrase “special needs” to emphasize that the reasonableness standard is an exception, not the rule: “Only in those exceptional circumstances in which special needs, beyond the normal need for law enforcement, make the warrant and probable-cause requirement impracticable, is a court entitled to substitute its balancing of interests for that of the Framers.” Id. at 351, 105 S.Ct. at 748, 83 L.Ed.2d at 741. (Blackmun, J., concurring) (emphasis added).
The question whether special needs could support suspicionless searches of persons would be addressed thereafter in a series of cases in which the Supreme Court recognized that “[i]n limited *626circumstances, where the privacy interests implicated by the search are minimal, and where an important governmental interest furthered by the intrusion would be placed in jeopardy by a requirement of individualized suspicion, a search may be reasonable despite the absence of such suspicion.” Skinner v. Ry. Labor Executives’ Ass’n, 489 U.S. 602, 624, 109 S.Ct. 1402, 1417, 103 L.Ed.2d 639, 664 (1989). Accordingly, in certain circumstances the Court has placed its imprimatur on the use of random drug testing of categories of individuals. Id. at 633, 109 S.Ct. at 1421-22, 103 L.Ed. 2d at 670 (authorizing suspicionless program of drug testing of train operators); Nat’l Treasury Employees Union v. Von Raab, 489 U.S. 656, 677, 109 S.Ct. 1384, 1396-97, 103 L.Ed.2d 685, 709 (1989) (allowing random drug testing of certain treasury employees involved in drug interdiction). But see Chandler v. Miller, 520 U.S. 305, 319, 117 S.Ct. 1295, 1303, 137 L.Ed.2d 513, 526 (1997)(finding unconstitutional Georgia’s policy requiring candidates for public office to submit to drug testing because, to demonstrate special need, government must show “concrete danger demanding departure from the Fourth Amendment’s main rule”). In Chandler, supra, the Court held that absent an adequate explanation for the need to target the specified category of person for the non-individualized, suspicionless drug testing, a generalized statement of salutary motive for the search was held insufficient to overcome the constitutional protection against such governmental action. 520 U.S. at 319, 117 S.Ct. at 1303, 137 L.Ed. 2d at 526.
In Vernonia, supra, 515 U.S. at 665, 115 S.Ct. at 2396, 132 L.Ed. 2d at 582, the United States Supreme Court first upheld the use of random drug testing in a school setting. The school district’s policy of requiring the random drug testing of student athletes was implemented after district officials noticed a sharp increase in drug use among students in general and student athletes in particular. Id. at 648, 115 S.Ct. at 2388, 132 L.Ed.2d at 571. The high school football and wrestling coach attributed at least one severe injury, as well as omissions of safety procedures among athletes, to the effects of drug use. Id. at 649,115 S.Ct. at *6272389, 132 L.Ed.2d at 572. The increase in drug use by student athletes was described as having reached “epidemic proportions” and, so, the school district resorted to random drug testing of all interscholastic athletes. Ibid. Suspicion-based testing was deemed inadequate to address the school district’s problems: The danger to students participating in the sports activities while under the influence of drugs and the role-model effect at work in the school district rendered the school officials unable to exercise appropriate control and order necessary for an educational environment. Ibid.
In reviewing the drug-testing policy, the Court stated that special needs that make the warrant and probable cause requirement impracticable can exist in the public school context, where requiring a warrant “would unduly interfere with the maintenance of the swift and informal disciplinary procedures [that are] needed” and “would undercut ‘the substantial need of teachers and administrators for freedom to maintain order in the schools.’ ” Id. at 653, 115 S.Ct. at 2391, 132 L.Ed.2d at 574 (alteration in original) (citing New Jersey v. T.L.O., supra, 469 U.S. at 340-41, 105 S.Ct. at 742, 83 L.Ed.2d at 741-42). The Court noted that “while children do not ‘shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate ... ’ the nature of those rights is what is appropriate for children in school.” Id. at 655-56, 115 S.Ct. at 2392, 132 L.Ed.2d at 576.
The Court observed that children in school are subject to close supervisory conditions and therefore generally enjoy a lesser expectation of privacy than adult members of the general population, and that privacy expectations were “even less with regard to student athletes.” Id. at 657, 115 S.Ct. at 2392-93, 132 L.Ed.2d at 577 (noting communal changing and showering involved in school sports participation). In respect of the intrusion associated with the method of sample collection being utilized, the Court found privacy interests to be compromised only to a “negligible” degree because the conditions were “nearly identical” to those one would encounter in a public restroom. Id. at 658, 115 S.Ct. at 2393, 132 L.Ed.2d at 577. Although it was clear that the testing of bodily *628fluids constituted a “search” for purposes of the Fourth Amendment, in terms of the search’s intrusion upon privacy interests, the Court viewed as significant that the test detected only drugs; no other information about the subject’s body was revealed by the testing and the test results were disclosed to few individuals. Id. at 658, 115 S.Ct. at 2393, 132 L.Ed.2d at 577-78.
Regarding the governmental-interest question, the Court stated that curbing drug use by children is important and found the rampant epidemic-like use of drugs in Vernonia, particularly by athletes, created a crisis because sports team members faced special health risks and, within the school community, they “were the leaders of the drug culture.” Id. at 649, 663, 115 S.Ct. at 2388-89, 2395-96, 132 L.Ed.2d at 571, 580. The Court concluded, on balance, that the policy of random testing of the student athletes was an effective means of curbing the drug problem in the Vernonia school district that was “largely fueled” by the “role model” effect of athletes’ drug use, and that was “of particular danger to athletes.” Id. at 663, 115 S.Ct. at 2395-96,132 L.Ed.2d at 581. Thus, a six-member majority of the Court upheld the school district’s policy of drug testing school athletes upon a balancing of the interests because the majority determined that 1) students, and in particular student athletes, had a decreased expectation of privacy, 2) the search was relatively unobtrusive, and 3) the need for the random testing of the circumscribed class of student athletes was demonstrated to be immediate and severe. Id. at 664-65, 115 S.Ct. at 2396, 132 L.Ed.2d at 581-82.
The dissent written by Justice O’Connor (joined by Justices Stevens and Souter) chastised the majority for “treatpng] a suspicion-based regime as if it were just any run-of-the-mill, less intrusive alternative — that is, an alternative that officials may bypass if the lesser intrusion, in their reasonable estimation, is outweighed by policy concerns unrelated to practicability.” Id. at 676, 115 S.Ct. at 2402, 132 L.Ed.2d at 589 (O’Connor, J., dissenting). The dissent viewed the ease as addressing the question whether the Fourth Amendment is “so lenient that students may *629be deprived of [its] only remaining, and most basic, categorical protection: its strong preference for an individualized suspicion requirement, with its accompanying antipathy toward personally intrusive, blanket searches of mostly innocent people,” and said that the answer “must plainly be no.” Id. at 681, 115 S.Ct. at 2404, 132 L.Ed.2d at 592 (O’Connor, J., dissenting). The dissent also detailed inadequacies it perceived in the record, and additionally concluded that the particular policy of suspicionless testing swept too broadly and too imprecisely. Id. at 684-86, 115 S.Ct. at 2406-07,132 L.Ed.2d at 594-95 (O’Connor, J., dissenting).
B.
One could not have predicted from the holding in Vemonia the United States Supreme Court’s expansion of the special-needs “exception” to Fourth Amendment protections. The new liberality with which “special needs” would be found in a school setting manifested itself in Board of Education of Independent School District No. 92 of Pottawatomie County v. Earls, 536 U.S. 822, 122 S.Ct. 2559, 153 L.Ed.2d 735 (2002). In a five-to-four opinion, the Court upheld random drug testing of all students involved in school extracurricular activities without any demonstration by the school district of a severe or pervasive drug problem among the students to be tested and without any specific concern about a safety risk caused by particularized drug use. Ibid. The school district’s policy simply conditioned participation in school-sponsored extracurricular activities on a student’s consent to submit to random drug testing based on a generalized desire to deter drug use by young people. Id. at 826, 122 S.Ct. at 2562, 153 L.Ed.2d at 741-42.
Despite the Earls majority’s assertion that the Court’s earlier holding in Vernonia “did not simply authorize all school drug testing, but rather conducted a fact-specific balancing of the intrusion on the child’s Fourth Amendment rights against the promotion of legitimate government interests,” id. at 830,122 S.Ct. at 2565, 153 L.Ed.2d at 744, notably absent from the remainder of *630the Court’s discussion was any justification for employing, in the first instance, a balancing of interests for this category of student population. The majority did not explain why suspicion-based testing of the targeted students (those involved in extracurricular activities) was inadequate to meet government’s substantial need, thereby warranting resort to special-needs balancing, as was the case with the student athletes in Vernonia. See T.L.O., supra, 469 U.S. at 351, 105 S.Ct. at 748, 83 L.Ed.2d at 740 (Blackmun, J., concurring).
Also, in its application of a “fact-sensitive” analysis to the drug testing in dispute in Earls, the majority stated that the reduced expectation of privacy among the student athletes was not “essential” to its determination in Vemonia that students generally have a reduced overall expectation of privacy. Earls, supra, 536 U.S. at 831, 122 S.Ct. at 2565, 153 L.Ed.2d at 745. The reduced student privacy expectations ascertained in Vemonia were described as instead depending “primarily upon the school’s custodial responsibility and authority.” Ibid. Nonetheless, the majority added that students who participate in extracurricular activities “voluntarily subject themselves to many of the same intrusions on their privacy as do athletes.” Ibid.
The diminished respect given to students’ privacy markedly contrasts with the Court’s heightened deference to the assertion of government need. In addressing the “immediacy” of the government’s concerns, the Court accepted the school district’s generalized assertion that “the nationwide drug epidemic makes the war against drugs a pressing concern in every school.” Id. at 834, 122 S.Ct. at 2567, 153 L.Ed.2d at 747. The Court eschewed any requirement that a particularized degree of drug problem be demonstrated in the schools notwithstanding that seven years earlier the Court relied on such findings in its decision in Vemonia. Id. at 835, 122 S.Ct. at 2568, 153 L.Ed.2d at 748. The Earls Court perceived the drug problem among students to have “only grown worse” since its decision in Vemonia, and accordingly refused to “fashion what would in effect be a constitutional quan*631turn of drug use necessary to show a ‘drug problem.’ ” Id. at 836, 122 S.Ct. at 2575, 153 L.Ed.2d at 747. Although the Court recognized that “in Vemonia there might have been a closer fit between the testing of student athletes and the trial court’s finding that the drug problem was ‘fueled by the role model effect of athletes’ drug use,’ ” it concluded that the drug testing of students who participate in extracurricular activities “effectively serves the School District’s interest in protecting the safety and health of its students.” Id. at 837-38, 122 S.Ct. at 2569, 153 L.Ed. 2d at 749.
In her dissent, Justice Ginsburg, joined by Justices O’Connor, Stevens, and Souter, objected to the majority’s revisionist characterization of Vemonia: “Vemonia cannot be read to endorse invasive and suspicionless drug testing of all students upon any evidence of drug use, solely because drugs jeopardize the life and health of those who use them.” Id. at 844, 122 S.Ct. at 2572, 153 L.Ed.2d at 754 (Ginsburg, J., dissenting). Rather, the dissent viewed the particularized problem of student athletes’ drug use in Vemonia as “essential to the Vemonia judgment,” noting that the Court “ha[s] since confirmed that [the] special risks [involved in student athletes’ drug use] were necessary to [the] decision in Vemonia.” Id. at 851, 122 S.Ct. at 2576, 153 L.Ed.2d at 758 (Ginsburg, J., dissenting) (citing Chandler, supra, 520 U.S. at 317, 117 S.Ct. at 1302, 137 L.Ed.2d at 525; Ferguson v. Charleston, 532 U.S. 67, 87, 121 S.Ct. 1281, 1293, 149 L.Ed.2d 205, 222 (2001) (Kennedy, J., concurring)). According to the dissenting members, “[the Earls ] case resembles Vemonia only in that the School Districts in both cases conditioned engagement in activities outside the obligatory curriculum on random subjection to urinalysis” and concluded, contrary to the majority’s effort to fit Earls within Vemonia, that “a program so sweeping is not sheltered by Vemonia; its unreasonable reach renders it impermissible under the Fourth Amendment.” Id. at 853-54, 122 S.Ct. at 2577, 153 L.Ed.2d at 759-60 (Ginsburg, J., dissenting).
*632c.
The majority’s analysis in Earls now readily permits a “reasonableness” or balancing test. Unlike Vemonia, the record developed in Earls was devoid of any allegation of a “crisis” or “epidemic” of drug use either occurring among the students targeted for testing, or fueled by them, rendering suspicion-based testing inadequate to stem an identified problem caused by the students to be tested. The majority in Earls was content to base its conclusion of “government need” on a generalized reference to evidence of a “nationwide” drug epidemic, relying on that to justify random drug testing of a student subset that had no demonstrated connection to drug use. Plainly, the Court was satisfied to forego the requirement of a demonstrated need to target a particular group of students for random drug testing.
Moreover, to the extent that safety concerns had been vital to the determination that a special need existed permitting a departure from traditional Fourth Amendment protections and allowing mass suspicionless drug testing, the Court abandoned that as well. Compare Von Raab, supra, 489 U.S. 656, 109 S.Ct. 1384, 103 L.Ed.2d 685, and Skinner, supra, 489 U.S. 602, 109 S.Ct. 1402,103 L.Ed.2d 639, with Chandler, supra, 520 U.S. 305, 117 S.Ct. 1295, 137 L.Ed.2d 513. The Earls Court disavowed that its holding in Vemonia ever hinged on the conclusion that when a student athlete participates in sports while impaired by drugs or alcohol, a danger arises for the student athlete, as well as for his or her comrades in competition.
Despite those protestations, scholars recognize that Earls is a change from Vernonia. See, e.g., Supreme Court Expands Random Drug Testing: Does the Fourth Amendment Still Protect Students?, 170 Ed. Law Rep. 15, 25 (2002) (noting that evolution in jurisprudence demonstrates “a clear shift” that gives “less weight to the student’s privacy interests and much greater weight to the school’s health and safety concerns”); Comment, Random Suspicionless Drug Testing: Are Students No Longer Afforded Fourth Amendment Protections?, 19 N.Y.L. Sch. J. Hum. Rts. 451, 479 *633(stating that “the Court’s deviation from the warrant requirement ... has provided school districts with a malleable solution devoid of individualized suspicion and a requirement that a substantial drug problem be present before subjecting students to tests”); Note, “Testing” Students Beyond the Academic Curriculum: Public Schools, the Fourth Amendment, and the Supreme Court, 11 Widener J. Pub.L. 551, 590 (2002) (stating that “armed with Earls, school districts certainly have the autonomy to push the constitutional envelope and further experiment with the rights of public school students”).
III.
Between Vemonia and Earls we embraced a special-needs test in New Jersey Transit PBA Local 304 v. New Jersey Transit Corp., 151 N.J. 531, 701 A.2d 1243 (1997). There we applied a special-needs standard to a program of random drug testing of New Jersey Transit (NJT) police officers. 151 N.J. at 558, 701 A.2d 1243. Mindful that, under the New Jersey Constitution, exceptions to the warrant requirement are “more limited” than under the federal constitution, we nonetheless concluded that the special-needs test provided a “useful analytical framework.” Id. at 556-57, 701 A.2d 1243. The fact-specific inquiry of the special-needs test compels a court to assess first, in context, “the practicality of the warrant and probable-cause requirement.” Id. at 548, 701 A.2d 1243 (citation omitted).3 The test then “enables a court to take into account the complex factors relevant in each *634case and to balance those factors in such a manner as to ensure that that right against unreasonable searches and seizures is adequately protected.” Id. at 556, 701 A.2d 1243 (citation omitted).
In applying that analysis to the NJT drug-testing policy, we first observed that the nature of the police officers’ patrol duties rendered impractical detection of drug use by observation. Id. at 558, 701 A.2d 1243. A requirement of individualized suspicion of drug use would compromise NJT’s legitimate safety concerns in that drug impaired officers could “cause great human loss before any signs of impairment become noticeable to supervisors or others.” Id. at 559, 701 A.2d 1243 (citing Skinner, supra, 489 U.S. at 628, 109 S.Ct. at 1419, 103 L.Ed.2d at 667). Convinced that individualized suspicion of drug use was an imperfect approach to the problem, we turned then to the balancing of relevant factors.
We found the NJT program to be tailored narrowly in that it applied only to employees who performed functions affecting public safety. Ibid. Although we recognized that urine testing is an intrusion on privacy during both collection and testing, even if “collected in a manner that ensures the modesty and privacy” of employees, we determined that transit officers have a diminished expectation of privacy due to their “law enforcement status.” Id. at 560-61, 701 A.2d 1243. Moreover, we determined that the threat to public safety from officers acting under the influence of drugs was “manifest.” Id. at 562, 701 A.2d 1243. They are permitted to carry firearms, and to “exercise the most awesome and dangerous power that a democratic state possesses ... the power to use lawful force to arrest and detain.” Id. at 561, 701 A.2d 1243 (citation omitted). That is, “at any time ... [transit officers] may be called upon to exercise discretion in the use of a weapon. At that moment, the officer’s judgment is critical.” Id. at 562, 701 A.2d 1243. The duties of armed transit officers were viewed as “fraught with such risk of injury to others that even a momentary lapse of attention can have disastrous consequences.” Id. at 562-63, 701 A.2d 1243 (quoting Von Raab, supra, 489 U.S. *635at 670, 109 S.Ct. at 1393, 103 L.Ed.2d at 705). And finally, we were persuaded from the record that drug use was a problem among the ranks of NJT’s police officers. Id. at 563, 701 A.2d 1243. Thus, considering the “safety-sensitive” nature of the officers’ duties, along with the difficulty in detecting individualized drug use among a mobile force not subject to day-to-day scrutiny, we concluded that special needs existed to justify suspicionless drug testing of this particular category of NJT employee. Ibid.
The question for us is whether, having adopted in N.J. Transit the special-needs test as it was understood and applied in Vemonia, we are willing to change horses in midstream and adopt the lesser Earls standard as satisfying our own state constitutional requirements for searches.
IV.
A.
Our Court has not shied away from affording citizens of this State greater protection under the New Jersey Constitution than that divined by federal interpretation of the United States Constitution. See Gerald Rusello, The, New Jersey Supreme Court: New Directions?, 16 St. John’s J. Legal Comment. 655, 656 (2002); Marie Garibaldi, The Rehnquist Court and State Constitutional Law, 34 Tulsa L.J. 67, 74 (1998); Mary Cornelia Porter & G. Alan Tarr, The New Judicial Federalism and the Ohio Supreme Court: Anatomy of a Failure, 45 Ohio St. L.J. 143,157 (1984); William J. Brennan, Jr., State Constitutions and the Protection of Individual Rights, 90 Harv. L.Rev. 489, 499 (1977).
As we have explained,
[i]n interpreting the New Jersey Constitution, we look for direction to the United States Supreme Court, whose opinions can provide valuable sources of wisdom for us____but although that Court may be a polestar that guides as we navigate the New Jersey Constitution, we bear ultimate responsibility for the safe passage of our ship. Our eyes must not be so fixed on that star that we risk the welfare of our passengers on the shoals of constitutional doctrine.
[State v. Hempele, 120 N.J. 182, 196, 576 A.2d 793 (1990) (citation omitted).]
*636In determining whether to part company from the Supreme Court on interpretations of federal constitutional requirements when we interpret cognate provisions of our own Constitution, we have employed a “criteria” approach. State v. Williams, 93 N.J. 39, 57, 459 A.2d 641 (1983). That approach, first announced by Justice Handler in State v. Hunt, analyzes numerous factors, including (and most significant for this case) matters of particular state interest or local concern, state traditions, and public attitudes, to determine whether a particular situation calls for greater protections under the state constitution. 91 N.J. 338, 364-67, 450 A.2d 952 (Handler, J., concurring). Where particular questions are “local in character” and do not appear to require a “uniform national policy,” they may be suited for independent action based on state constitutional law. Id. at 367, 450 A.2d 952. The State’s history and traditions also weigh heavily in the determination. Ibid.
B.
Consistent with those principles, we have been willing to afford some greater protection under the State Constitution in the areas of search and seizure and individual privacy.. Hempele, supra, 120 N.J. at 197, 576 A.2d 793; see also Right to Choose v. Byrne, 91 N.J. 287, 300, 450 A.2d 925 (1982) (observing that “the United States Supreme Court itself has long proclaimed that state Constitutions may provide more expansive protection of individual liberties than the United States Constitution”) (citations omitted). Accordingly, on numerous occasions we have declined to follow the approach of the Supreme Court on search and seizure standards. See, e.g., State v. Cooke, 163 N.J. 657, 670, 751 A.2d 92 (2000) (concluding New Jersey Constitution requires existence of exigent circumstances for application of automobile exception to warrant requirement, notwithstanding Supreme Court decision to contrary); State v. Pierce, 136 N.J. 184, 213, 642 A.2d 947 (1994) (holding that vehicular search incident to traffic offense is unreasonable under State Constitution); Hempele, supra, 120 N.J. at *637195, 576 A.2d 793 (holding that citizens of New Jersey have privacy interest in curbside garbage); State v. Novembrino, 105 N.J. 95, 154, 519 A.2d 820 (1987) (declining to recognize good-faith exception to exclusionary rule in New Jersey); Hunt, supra, 91 N.J. at 344-47, 450 A.2d 952 (holding that State Constitution protects privacy interest in telephone billing records); State v. Johnson, 68 N.J. 349, 353, 346 A.2d 66 (1975) (affording greater protections in context of consent to search).
State v. Cooke, supra, exemplifies our disinclination to follow in lockstep the evolution of United States Supreme Court precedent that has loosened requirements concerning the reasonableness of searches. 163 N.J. at 670, 751 A.2d 92. At the time of our decision in Cooke, several recent United States Supreme Court cases had “essentially disposed of’ the additional requirement of exigent circumstances in the context of automobile searches. 163 N.J. at 666, 751 A.2d 92 (citing Pennsylvania v. Labron, 518 U.S. 938, 116 S.Ct. 2485, 135 L.Ed.2d 1031 (1996)). Perceiving those cases as rendering “virtually all warrantless searches of vehicles ... valid under the automobile exception as long as the search is supported by probable cause,” we refused to modify our jurisprudence to follow federal precedent. Id. at 666, 670, 751 A.2d 92.
Here, where the school board’s policy is challenged under Article I, paragraph 1, in addition to Article I, paragraph 7, we are informed by our prior holdings under our State Constitution that provide greater individual privacy protections than under the federal constitution. See Planned Parenthood of Cent. N.J. v. Farmer, 165 N.J. 609, 629, 762 A.2d 620 (2000) (recognizing that “in New Jersey, we have a long-standing history ... demonstrating a commitment to the protection of individual rights under the State Constitution”). Accordingly, “governmental intrusion into privacy rights may require a more persuasive showing of a public interest under our State Constitution than under the federal Constitution.” In re Grady, 85 N.J. 235, 249-50, 426 A.2d 467 (1981) (holding “right to be sterilized comes within privacy rights protected from undue governmental influence by our State Consti*638tution”); see also State v. Saunders, 75 N.J. 200, 220, 381 A.2d 333 (1977) (Schreiber, J., concurring) (fornication statute violates right of privacy under State Constitution).
V.
The starting point in the analysis under Article I, paragraph 7 is that suspicionless searches, such as that involved in random drug testing, are prohibited and must be justified by a special need. Only when that special need is established may one proceed to balance the nature of the intrusion on privacy against the severity of the demonstrated government need. By adhering to that requirement we prevent the special-needs exception from swallowing the rule, as Justice Blackmun cautioned in T.L.O., supra. That served as our premise in N.J. Transit, supra. 151 N.J. at 544, 701 A.2d 1243 (stating that only “in certain limited circumstances” have warrantless searches, conducted without individualized suspicion or probable cause, been upheld). And, that special showing was required and satisfied in both Vernonia and N.J. Transit. In each, suspicion-based methods were insufficient to detect and stop drug use in the circumscribed populations impacted by the testing program. The use of drugs by members of the targeted populations posed a danger to them, as well as to other innocent individuals interacting with them. Drug use among the population of persons targeted for the random drug testing also was demonstrated clearly. The random program of routine testing that was devised in each case was tailored narrowly to the specific problem population only and it was necessary for safety’s sake, other methods of preventing drug use having proven inadequate.
The record here is unlike those in Vemonia and N.J. Transit in each of those respects. It fails on every level. No special showing has been made to justify the right to employ a balaneingof-interests test in lieu of typical Article I, paragraph 7 protections for the classification of students targeted for suspicionless testing. The majority’s apparent satisfaction with the level of proof on that *639threshold point effectively eliminates the first step of the analysis for the population of students affected. We should not even get to the balancing-of-interests step in the analysis, but if we did, the record fails that test as well.
A.
First, nowhere in this record is there justification for singling out these students for required drug testing. There is no doubt that we would not countenance mass drug testing, without any demonstration of cause, of individuals found to loiter on street corners in known drug-infested neighborhoods. Public school students, unconnected with drug use or its promotion in any way, should enjoy no less protection from random bodily searches. Students’ privacy interests are not ephemeral. Here, those interests are being cast aside without any justification for the targeting of this subset of students.
The surveys conducted do not demonstrate a drug problem among the extracurricular-program-involved students to be tested. Even the majority recognizes that “the RMBSI survey results do not distinguish between those who engage in extracurricular activities and those who do not.” Ante at 612, 826 A.2d at 651. And, no attempt has been made to show that suspicion-based methods are inadequate to further the district’s desire to curtail student drug use. The general statistics cited are not persuasive on either topic. There simply is no crisis or problem of “epidemic” proportion within the targeted population, or fueled by it. The statistics reflect some drug usage by students generally, but they also suggest that usage may, indeed, be lessening. Fundamentally, the statistics fail to demonstrate any nexus tying the group of students targeted for mass testing to the reason for the school board’s testing program.
One cannot but conclude that the program is not narrowly tailored. Any protestation about that point based on a generalized assertion of the need to use random drug testing as a means of deterrence is further belied by the current most comprehensive *640study of the effect of drug testing performed by a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, recently published in the Journal of School Health, April 2003, Vol. 73, No. 4, 159-64. That study demonstrates, contrary to the assumption of proponents of drug testing, a lack of deterrent effect from testing regimens implemented in school districts throughout the county. The study, the largest of its kind, encompassed 75,000 students. Its conclusions are not undermined by any competent proof in this record. In any event, invocation of a desire to deter drug use, albeit a salutary purpose, does not insulate government officials from compliance with attendant Article I, paragraph 7 protections. Cf. State v. Johnson, 168 N.J. 608, 775 A.2d 1273 (2001)(holding that mere reference to preventing evidence destruction in drug trafficking investigation is insufficient justification for trial court’s issuance of no-knock warrant to search home).
Here, there is no basis for finding special need to engage in a balancing of interests concerning the right of students in extracurricular activities to be free of the presumptively unreasonable search entailed by random drug testing. The majority avoids this failing in the Earls analysis by attempting to find an analogy here to administrative searches. The analogy is a poor one. Administrative searches of pervasively regulated industries have been permitted without individualized suspicion because of the intensive government involvement that is a condition of the permitted activity. See, e.g., In re Martin, 90 N.J. 295, 313-14, 447 A.2d 1290 (1982) (finding that casino employees have limited expectation of privacy based on pervasive agency regulation of industry); State v. Turcotte, 239 N.J.Super. 285, 290, 571 A.2d 305 (App.Div. 1990) (noting that horse racing is pervasively regulated industry). Warrantless searches conducted under that exception are permitted if three criteria are satisfied:
First there must be a “substantial” government interest that informs the regulatory scheme pursuant to which the inspection is made....
Second, the warrantless inspections must be “necessary to further [the] regulatory scheme.” ...
*641[And finally, “the statute’s inspection program, in terms of the certainty and regularity of its application [must] provid[e] a constitutionally adequate substitute for a warrant.”
[N.J. Transit, supra, 151 N.J. at 546, 701 A.2d 1243 (alterations in original) (quoting New York v. Burger, 482 U.S. 691, 702-03, 107 S.Ct. 2636, 2644, 96 L.Ed.2d 601, 614 (1987)).]
Students in school do not fall within the category of a pervasively regulated industry. Children must go to school through age sixteen. N.J.S.A. 18A:38-25 and -27. The State has a constitutional obligation to provide a thorough and efficient system of public school education. N.J. Const, art. VIII, § 4, ¶ 1. That setting, specifically the relationship between government and public school pupil, does not equate with an individual or entity being authorized to engage in an activity that the State permits to be performed, subject to the State’s careful and intensive regulatory control as a condition of the privilege.
In sum, the mere incantation that students do not enjoy the full constitutional protections of adults while under the control of school officials does not support the right to engage in a balancing of interests concerning the integrity of their bodily fluids. The Vemonia analysis that served as the backdrop to N.J. Transit required much more. In Vemonia, the school setting itself did not justify the random drug testing of the student athletes. The school administrators’ tutelary and custodial responsibility for school children generally did not support the collection and testing of the student athletes’ urine. Safety concerns and a telescoped suspicion of drug usage by athletes, as well as the athletes’ encouragement of others’ drug use by way of role model example, fueled the determination to allow the limited random testing. None of those reasons is present here. In my view, the record here is woefully inadequate to demonstrate a basis for engaging in a balancing of interests as to the constitutional right of this broad class of students (those involved in extracurricular activities or permitted to park on campus) to be free of the unreasonable search of random, routine drug testing.
*642B.
The record fails on a second level as well. Even if a balancing were to be performed, the school district has not carried its burden. The government need to perform this broad-based testing program is not compelling on this record. There is, as noted, no overwhelming problem in this school, or among this subset of students. Nor is the program of random drug testing supported by any legislative policy encouraging this wide-reaching routine testing. See, e.g., N.J.S.A. 18A:40A-12 (authorizing suspicion-based drug intervention programs in schools). Moreover, the recent study reported in the Journal of School Health indicates that school-based drug-testing programs have not proven their anticipated deterrent effect.
Against the weak interest in testing this particular subset of students one must weigh the privacy interests of the individuals. Students’ privacy expectations in their bodily fluids have never been violated like this before. The manner of the collection of the bodily fluids may not be in issue, but the collection and testing of the excretory fluids are still intrusions on privacy that must be justified in order to require the members of the group targeted to submit to testing. No reason has been given.
Indeed, picking the group that has been selected is perverse, one could say counterproductive.4 Earls, supra, 536 U.S. at 852-53, 122 S.Ct. at 2577, 153 L.Ed.2d at 759 (Ginsburg, J., dissenting) (citing study showing that students who participate in extracurricular activities are less likely to develop substance abuse problems). This program, like the one in Earls, is subject to the legitimate *643criticism that it risks driving away from school activities the very pupils who may be most susceptible to a drug culture.
Realistically, the school district picked this group for no other reason than to be able to claim that there is an element of consent to the search. The school district contends that students voluntarily submit to the testing as a condition of choosing to participate in extracurricular activities. In my view, the balancing does not tilt in government’s favor based on its unrealistic view of the “consent” involved when a student’s entitlement to participate in extracurricular activities is at stake.
In stating as much, I do not suggest, nor do the parties appear to assert, that students have an absolute right to participate in school extracurricular activities. See, e.g., Albach v. Odle, 531 F.2d 983, 984-85 (10th Cir.1976) (stating that “[participation in interscholastic athletics is not a constitutionally protected civil right”); Mitchell v. La. High Sch. Athletic Ass’n, 430 F.2d 1155, 1158 (5th Cir.1970) (observing that “[t]he privilege of participating in interscholastic athletics must be deemed to fall ... outside the protection of due process”). Rather, plaintiffs rest their argument in this respect on Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U.S. 593, 597, 92 S.Ct. 2694, 2697, 33 L.Ed.2d 570, 577 (1972), where the Court wrote:
[E]ven though a person has no “right” to a valuable government benefit and even though the government may deny him the benefit for any number of reasons, there are some reasons upon which the government may not rely. It may not deny a benefit to a person on a basis that infringes his constitutionally protected interests ... for if the government could deny a benefit to a person because of his [exercise of] constitutionally protected [rights], his exercise of those freedoms would in effect be penalized and inhibited. This would allow the government to “produce a result which [it] could not command directly.” Such interference with constitutional rights is impermissible.
[ (citation omitted).]
See also Bd. of County Comm’rs, Wabaunsee County, Kan. v. Umbehr, 518 U.S. 668, 674, 116 S.Ct. 2342, 2347, 135 L.Ed.2d 843, 851 (1996) (stating that “our modern ‘unconstitutional conditions’ doctrine holds that the government ‘may not deny a benefit to a person on a basis that infringes his constitutionally protected ... freedom of speech’ even if he has no entitlement to that benefit”) *644(citation omitted); Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398, 404, 83 S.Ct. 1790, 1794, 10 L.Ed.2d 965, 971 (1963) (commenting that “it is too late in the day to doubt that the liberties of religion and expression may be infringed by the denial of or placing of conditions upon a benefit or privilege”); Right to Choose, supra, 91 N.J. at 287, 450 A.2d 925 (holding that prohibiting use of state Medicaid funds to pay for abortion services “can be understood only as an attempt to achieve with carrots what government is forbidden to achieve with sticks”) (citation omitted).
Plaintiffs argue that the government is forbidden from making the receipt of a benefit or privilege (in this case, participation in extracurricular activities) contingent on the infringement of a constitutionally protected right (freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures). Defendants, in turn, counter that the high school students waive their right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures by “voluntarily” participating in activities that are no more than a “privilege.” Plaintiffs clearly have the better of the argument: The school district cannot require “voluntary” waiver of the right to be free from searches any more than the county commissioners of Wabaunsee County, Kansas could require municipal contractors to “voluntarily” waive their First Amendment right to criticize the local government in order to receive government contracts. See Umbehr, supra, 518 U.S. at 674, 116 S.Ct. at 2347, 135 L.Ed.2d at 851. Cf. Marchwinski v. Howard, 113 F.Supp.2d 1134, 1140 (E.D.Mich.2000), aff'd by an equally divided court, No. 00-2115, 2003 WL 1870916 (6th Cir. April 7, 2003) (striking down Michigan statute conditioning welfare benefits on drug testing). The contention is tantamount to conditioning receipt of a valuable government benefit on waiver of a constitutional right, an argument repeatedly rejected by the Supreme Court. See, e.g., Sindermann, supra, 408 U.S. at 597, 92 S.Ct. at 2697, 33 L.Ed.2d at 577. In short, although the government may have no particular constitutional responsibility to provide a particular benefit, if it chooses to do so it cannot condition receipt of the benefit in a way that requires recipients to forego constitutional rights.
*645Furthermore, in today’s society, it is not at all clear that participation in high school extracurricular activities is altogether voluntary — at least for those students who wish to attend four-year colleges and universities. As Justice Ginsburg explained in her dissent in Earls, extracurricular activities are “essential in reality for students applying to college.... Students Volunteer’ for extracurricular pursuits in the same way they might volunteer for honors classes: They subject themselves to additional requirements, but they do so in order to take full advantage of the education offered them.” Earls, 536 U.S. at 845-46, 122 S.Ct. at 2573, 153 L.Ed.2d at 754 (citation omitted) (Ginsburg, J., dissenting).
It also is far from clear that high schools that provide extracurricular activities are acting altruistically by providing the students a voluntary “benefit.” The better argument, as recognized by the dissenting members in Earls, and others, seems to be that such activities have become an essential component of education in American .public high schools. Twenty years ago, President Reagan recognized the “significant place extracurricular opportunities have in the growth of [the Nation’s] high school students,” and the fact that those opportunities “help students to learn to set and achieve goals, to organize their time effectively, and to enhance the social skills that are needed to enjoy and succeed in life.” Pres. Proc. No. 5109, 48 Fed.Reg. 44,749 (Sept. 27,1983).
With a majority of high school students participating in some form of extracurricular activity, high school students who wish to protect their right to be free from unreasonable searches should not be forced to ostracize themselves from their peers by foregoing participation in any school-sponsored activity. See American Academy of Pediatrics, Testing for Drugs of Abuse in Children and Adolescents, available at http://www.aap.org/policy/01495.html (observing that “such programs may not be truly voluntary as there are often negative consequences for those who choose not to take part”). Plaintiffs here concede that student participation in extracurricular activities can be conditioned, for example, on a *646G.P.A. requirement, or adherence to a school code of conduct, or any number of factors that bear on a school district’s responsibility to provide a safe and orderly educational environment. However, the assertion of the right and authority to maintain a safe and orderly environment does not mean that students who participate must submit to random drug testing in order for that goal to be achieved, absent any showing of particularized drug use connected to the students involved in the extracurricular activities (or, as here, students who bring cars and park them on school property). That is, as Justice Ginsburg explained,
[i]n regulating an athletic program or endeavoring to combat an exploding drug epidemic, a school’s custodial obligations may permit searches that would otherwise unacceptably abridge students’ rights. When custodial duties are not ascendant, however, schools’ tutelary obligations to their students require them to “teach by example” by avoiding symbolic measures that diminish constitutional protections. “That [schools] are educating the young for citizenship is reason for scrupulous protection of Constitutional freedoms of the individual, if we are not to strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes.”
[Earls, supra, 536 U.S. at 854, 122 S.Ct at 2578, 153 L.Ed.2d at 760 (alteration in original) (Ginsburg, J., dissenting) (citing West Virginia Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 637, 63 S.Ct. 1178, 1185, 87 L.Ed. 1628, 1637 (1943)).]
VI.
What is particularly mystifying to me is the majority’s determination to provide less protection against unreasonable searches to a category of suspicionless school children, when it has not hesitated to provide enhanced protections under our State Constitution to suspects in criminal prosecutions. The majority’s determination affords lesser personal protection from unreasonable searches to innocent public school students than to committed mental patients suspected of harboring drugs within their rooms in a State-run institution, State v. Stott, 171 N.J. 343, 794 A.2d 120 (2002), or to out-of-eontrol intoxicated individuals transported to hospital emergency rooms from accident scenes by police officers, State v. Ravotto, 169 N.J. 227, 777 A.2d 301 (2001). Although those cases implicated potential criminal charges, the lack of a potential criminal consequence does not permit unfettered access *647to students’ bodily fluids, absent any particularized suspicion of the students targeted. The lack of criminal prosecution in the current setting falls far short of logically supporting the analogy to an administrative search found by the majority today.
Students have privacy expectations that legitimately include freedom from the bodily searches required for drug testing. The majority’s acceptance of references to national concerns about drug usage by student-age youths as sufficient to quell constitutional concerns utterly fails on analysis. The teacher and administrator anecdotes in this record reflect concerned and involved teaching staff members, but do not adequately demonstrate a problem that cannot be addressed with suspicion-based drug testing, or a program of random drug testing tailored to problem populations within the student body. The anecdotes, coupled with the unfocused survey information, fall short of demonstrating a need to test those students involved in extracurricular activities. For me, the record here is as inadequate as the Earls record was.
Not doubting for a second the good intentions of the school district, and that of the majority of our Court that has found room in our State Constitution for this broad program of drug testing of public school students, I nevertheless return to the notion that there are certain core values that are dear to our society and define our self-identity. Central among them are the right to freedom from unreasonable searches, to adherence to the constitutional requirement of a warrant procured from a neutral magistrate upon a showing of probable cause, and to the assurance that the warrant requirement will be dispensed with only for the most compelling reasons. In N.J. Transit, our Court accepted the “special-needs” analysis, as it was employed in Vemonia. The special-needs test applied in N.J. Transit, however, does not support the drug-testing program here. Our Court can only take this step by agreeing to apply the less rigorous standard for finding special need that a bare majority of the United States Supreme Court has permitted in Earls. It is a mistake to do so.
*648We have not hesitated in the past to conclude that the State Constitution affords New Jerseyans greater protection against unreasonable searches than that which is afforded under the United States Constitution. We do not lightly interpret our constitutional language differently from its federal counterpart, but this is an occasion on which our Constitution’s surpassing protection should be recognized. There is no convincing practical and necessary justification, no “special need,” to deprive this targeted category of persons — school children who wish to involve themselves in extracurricular activities — of their right to be free from random, routine drug testing.
VII.
I would reverse and reinstate the judgment of the Chancery Division.
Justices LONG and ALBIN join in this opinion.
For affirmance — Chief Justice PORITZ and Justices COLEMAN, VERNIERO and ZAZZALI — 4.
For reversal — Justices LONG, LaVECCHIA and ALBIN — 3.
The most recent report by the New Jersey Department of Education indicates that there are approximately 332,426 students in grades nine through twelve in New Jersey's public schools. New Jersey Vital Education Statistics 2001-2002, available at http://www.state.nj.us/njded/data/vitaled/0102/. Assuming statewide application of the majority's holding, and assuming that, as in Hunterdon County, eighty percent of students statewide participate in extracurricular activities, the majority's holding may affect approximately 265,940 New Jersey students.
The results of the follow-up survey conducted during the 1999-2000 school year signaled an overall trend toward less substance use. In most categories less use was assessed. Even in the high risk category of multi-drug users, the substance use rates went down: freshman — 57% down (1.4% to 0.6%); sophomores — 100% down (2.8% to 0%); juniors — 14% down (5.1% to 4.4%); seniors — 52% down (6.6% to 3.2%).
In a companion case applying the special-needs test in the context of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) testing for those convicted or charged with sexual assault, we similarly required a threshold showing that probable cause or individualized suspicion would be impractical. State ex rel. J.G., N.S. and J.T., 151 N.J. 565, 578, 701 A.2d 1260 (1997). We found that requirement satisfied because those with HIV often do not have any manifestations of the disease. Id. at 579, 701 A.2d 1260. Thus, where the results of the test would have no criminal consequences, and the State had a compelling interest in the physical and mental well-being of the sexual-assault victim, we upheld the statute that authorizes such searches. Id. at 594, 701 A.2d 1260.
Although the intent of the school board may be beneficent, it is entirely possible that the drug-testing program actually will achieve the opposite of the desired effect. See, e.g., ACLU Fact Sheet #2: Social Science Research on Adolescent Drug Use and School Involvement, available at http://archive.acIu.orgdibrary/earIsfact2.html (cataloging various authorities that have found that suspicionless, random drug testing in high school students might actually increase prevalence of drug use).