324
Rehnquist, C. J., dissenting
test." Ante, at 309. But if we are to heed the oft-quoted words of Justice Brandeis in his dissent in New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, 285 U. S. 262, 311 (1932)—"[i]t is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country"—novelty itself is not a vice. These novel experiments, of course, must comply with the United States Constitution; but their mere novelty should not be a strike against them.
Few would doubt that the use of illegal drugs and abuse of legal drugs is one of the major problems of our society. Cases before this Court involving drug use extend to numerous occupations—railway employees, Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives' Assn., 489 U. S. 602 (1989), Border Patrol officers, Treasury Employees v. Von Raab, 489 U. S. 656 (1989), high school students, Vernonia School Dist. 47J v. Acton, 515 U. S. 646 (1995), and machine operators, Paperworkers v. Misco, Inc., 484 U. S. 29 (1987). It would take a bolder person than I to say that such widespread drug usage could never extend to candidates for public office such as Governor of Georgia. The Court says that "[n]othing in the record hints that the hazards respondents broadly describe are real and not simply hypothetical for Georgia's polity." Ante, at 319. But surely the State need not wait for a drug addict, or one inclined to use drugs illegally, to run for or actually become Governor before it installs a prophylactic mechanism. We held as much in Von Raab:
"First, petitioners argue that the program is unjustified because it is not based on a belief that testing will reveal any drug use by covered employees. In pressing this argument, petitioners point out that the Service's testing scheme was not implemented in response to any perceived drug problem among Customs employees . . . .
"Petitioners' first contention evinces an unduly narrow view of the context in which the Service's testing
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