Random Student Drug Testing

I'm going to start off by saying that I believe those who support it have good intentions. They want to fight drug use among teens and we should. The question isn't about whether we should or not, the question is, how should we? An old English proverb says that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. If you have trouble understanding what that means, it means that well-intended acts can have disastrous results. Randomly drug-testing students is one of those acts. One key basis of supporting random drug testing is that if students were warned that they could be randomly caught any day in school, they'd be less likely to try drugs in the first place. That argument seems like common sense and is definitely logical. The biggest flaw in that argument is that teens are infamous for assuming nothing bad will happen to them. "Sure, some people will get caught, but I won't." The other flaw is that a student who does drugs ALREADY HAS a bigger chance of getting caught than randomly at school. They could get caught in the act, someone could smell smoke off them, see their extremely red eyes, or see them acting violently, and so on The next argument is: if people are innocent, why should they care? They have nothing to hide. For the sake of this, let's assume that the tests are 100% accurate. A better question is, should people be able to enjoy their fundamental right of privacy unless they have done something that makes them genuinely deserving otherwise? We have two ways to deal with problems: The first way holds individuals accountable for their own actions. The irresponsible, reckless groups of individuals who endanger others are held accountable and punished or rehabilitated accordingly. The authorities handle the reckless people and leave the innocent people alone. The second way treats all people as if they are that irresponsible, reckless group, and random drug testing does that. Granted, punishment and rehab only happen if the student fails the drug test. So those who are innocent still won't receive that. However, calling students out of class to urinate in a bottle in front of an administrator when they've done nothing to arise suspicion is highly intrusive. The other problem is they are missing valuable class time and can feel very humiliated. This all happens when they have DONE NOTHING TO ARISE SUSPICION As I said earlier, we need to fight drug use among teens, make no mistake. Reasonable suspicion testing is a far better way to do it. The first argument against reasonable suspicion is that it singles people out, whereas random treats everyone equally. Why should everyone be treated equally in this case? Why should a good and sober student be treated the same as someone clearly on drugs? That would be like pulling random people over to do a Breathalyzer test instead of pulling people over for swerving or showing any other signs of drunk driving. Many teachers know who's doing drugs. It's easy to tell. Their eyes are bloodshot, they can't get up when the bell rings, they fall asleep in class a lot, they have to use the bathroom 20 times, you get the picture. Random drug testing prevents the school from getting to them quickly enough because they are testing randomly and not out of reasonable suspicion. You may then say, "Okay, they should do random, but if they have reason to believe that someone is doing drugs, they should be able to deal with them." First off, if you favor random drug testing because it treats everyone equally and singles no one out, you're trying to have it both ways. If equality is not your argument and you believe that we should do both, then why is random necessary? Granted, not everyone who does drugs is showing signs of it at school. However, if someone is not doing drugs at school, or is not high at school, since when is it the school's job to catch it? Students who misbehave off campus are under the jurisdiction of their parents and the police, not the school. As long as they are behaving at school, it's not the school's job to get them in trouble. Back to random drug testing. The last argument says "I am in favor of whatever works to reduce drug use among teens." Well, randomly drug testing is totally counterproductive. As I mentioned before, random drug testing is like randomly pulling people over for a Breathalyzer test instead of doing it based on signs of drunk driving. When you're looking for needles in a haystack, the worst thing to do is pile on more hay. Knowing that the odds are less likely they will be called to do a test than if it were based on reasonable suspicion, the likelihood of students doing drugs is greater The second reason it's counterproductive is that marijuana hangs around for weeks, while many harder drugs go right through the person. Drugs like coke and meth probably won't show up on the test because they leave the body quickly. Marijuana that's a month old will show up. You might say to that, "Well let's catch who we can, let's not let the perfect become enemy of the good." It's a good argument, the problem is that with marijuana showing up a month later but coke and meth not showing up even 2 days after, an incentive is created for people to go from marijuana to harder drugs. Or to be fair, the University of Michigan did a study about the impact of random drug testing. They found no difference in the number of students who use drugs in any category in schools with random drug testing and those without. The one exception is this: they found in schools that randomly test students, 12th graders are MORE likely to smoke marijuana while all other drug use is constant. So while my logic of why it's counterproductive may be wrong, neither result is what we want So far I've addressed randomly drug testing every student in school. However, random drug testing is mostly just a condition for students to participate in extracurricular activities Therein lies a big difference. Extracurricular activities are voluntary and school is not. The problem is that instead of getting off drugs, students will instead just opt-out of doing the extracurricular activities. What makes it worse is that extracurricular activities, except sports, are a great deterrent to drug use. If students have drug problems, extracurricular activities should be encouraged, not prohibited When it comes to sports, random drug testing makes more sense in comparison to randomly testing every student at school or other extracurricular activities. The problem with doing it for sports is what I mentioned earlier about how random drug testing precludes the school from getting to the ones who are likely on drugs quickly enough. All of this comes from someone who has never had a drink of alcohol, smoked a cigarette, or tried any illegal drug. But that's not the point. The point is that no one should have to give up his or her privacy based on what others might do or have done