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Purpose Using illegal drugs has been problem affecting different age levels. People use illegal drugs for so many different reasons. Even high school students do drugs in order to enhance their performance in academic, athletic, or extracurricular activities. Although not every high school student uses drugs to modify students skills, this ill-defined drug use in high school bring up the question whether to do random testing among high school students. People have different views on random testing. Some people might prefer random testing among high school students, while others say there should not be such a test for drug use.
Viewing at two different sides, people might wonder which topics are investigated on the issue of random testing on illegal drug use among high school students. In order for people to know the issue of random testing, they need to realize how serious drug issues are. Because the random and suspicion based tests are different among many other kinds of methods, both tests are comparable each other. Do students have rights to avoid both random and suspicion based testing?
Does random testing work? How accurate is it to do random testing? Is there any poll or survey data that clearly shows the actual situation? Random drug testing is being widely discussed concerning students rights, accuracy of drug test, and comparison of public opinion. Overall, I am leaning towards random drug testing in high schools because I believe it would not be fair to treat students who do not use drugs with who do drugs.
Topics to be investigated Random testing and suspicion based tests are the most common tests for drug use. Both tests show whether people have used drugs, but is it really necessary for the government to do both random and suspicion based tests in high school? The real issue here is which test should be used. The random tests seem to work in most cases. Shadow and Moreno state in their research that Tallmadge points out Oregon state district court decided to do mandatory drug testing for high school athletes (26). The Oregon state district court decision showed the need for the high schools to test students randomly.
Many people might be affected by the Oregon state court decision on random drug tests. While others have no effects on random drug tests regardless what the court decision was. In the article The curious rejection of drug testing by American schools it states, Objective analysts makes tough decisions because they believe school drug testing is unauthorized (Jacobs, 13). This quote argues against mandatory drug testing because it is unconstitutional. Random drug tests are usually used as valid poll data to recognize people who did not report their use of drugs.
Suspicion based tests are used based on students behavior. For many people, suspicion based drug tests can be very attractive because they are recognized as an objective way of detecting student illicit drug use. Yamaguchi states in his article, The most common reason for drug testing was for cause or suspicion (162). People might say reason for suspicion based tests is the easiness of recognizing ones drug use.
For example, people can catch students who use drugs based on the weird qualities of students behavior. It is still a big issue whether the suspicion based tests are biased or not. Unfairness on suspicion based tests seems to exist in our society because judging drug use solely on peoples behavior is injustice. For instance, I was so happy because I got A on my rhetoric paper. So without taking any drugs I acted little different than I usually did, but the policeman caught me on the street because of my weird action.
Although my behavior was abnormal, getting caught by policeman would not be fair. From my example, it is easy to say that the policeman used unfair treatment to catch me. More biased examples include race, gender, and age, which all are serious problems in our society. Everyone should remember that their rights for the random drug might not be protected because taking a random drug test is depending on the school.
Even though the US Supreme Court decided to have random testing in high schools, students have the right not to take random testing. Even some out going students can protest against the governments random drug policy. However, if students are not taking random drug tests, they are not able to participate in any activities in school. So it is a good idea that students take the random test and enjoy their school activities as much as they can. According to Louis article, the Fourth Amendment states people should have rights to be secure against unreasonable searches (35). Even though the Fourth Amendment says people have rights to be secure at any time, there are some arguments about peoples rights.
Although the Fourth Amendment says people have rights to be secure, peoples rights can not always be protected by law. Lindsay Earls, a high school student, argues the U. S Constitutions protections for people against unreasonable searches were violated by random drug testing (5). Earls is not the only case; many other people are suffering from rights issues because of random drug testing in high schools. Even people who have took random drug tests can support a student like Earl; their rights being violated.
According to the article Alcoholism & Drug Abuse Weekly, Although US Supreme Court allowed random drug testing of students, New Jersey courts relied on the states constitution, which provides protections from unreasonable searches and seizures (8). If there are people suffering from rights violations, this example is good news for those people. The Vernonia case is another example that is closely related to students rights. The Vernonia case allowed schools to use suspicion less drug tests for the student athletes. According to Boyd, he states The Vernonia particularly diminished students privacy expectations (169). Although there is no scientific proof on Vernonia school districts student drug use rates, this clearly shows that students privacy is being ignored.
From this, people can be divided to two different arguments; one group hoping for the rules of random drug tests to be changed, while the other group just follows the rules set by the government. The Supreme Court made a decision on random drug testing, but the question was how accurate is it to do any drug testing? Many people have different views on the accuracy of drug tests. Before people get into the issue of accuracy, people need to think about the cost of drug tests.
In terms of accuracy of drug test, people can not deny the costs of the drug testing program. Tony Local states Only 5 % of the nations schools began drug testing programs for athletes, mainly because of the cost of such programs (1). The most common type of drug testing is the urine test which only costs minimum of three dollars. Since the urine test is very cheap, it often brings inaccurate results. Some people may prefer to use urine tests, while others prefer not to use urine tests.
This argument develops from its accuracy of results. There are some people who try to avoid using urine tests because they are afraid to get false results; getting negative results. With many arguments on urine tests, there is a method called GC-MS, which costs a lot of money. In Hawkins article, Kent Holtorf states, GC-MS is ninety five percent to ninety nine percent accurate (47). Even though GC-MS costs lots of money, the accuracy of the test is very high. Like urine tests, people can have different ideas on GC-MS.
Some people might want to use GC-MS because it is very accurate and brings perfect results. Others might not use GC-MS because they can not afford for the tests. Even for the schools, if the government does not pay for the test, no school would want to adapt GC-MS analysis because it costs lots of money for them. Accuracy and costs are the problems that still need to be solved. Does random drug testing actually work? Some might say random drug tests have strong effects on students drug use, while others say they do not have any effects.
There have been many surveys and polls about random drug testing. An important fact from Yamaguchis research is that suspicion based testing was slightly more effective than any kind of drug tests (163). There has been a positive result after screening students for three years in Flemington, New Jersey. In Education Week, Bowman quotes, a 1999 students poll of in Flemington, N. J, whose schools 2, 900 students showed decreases in 20 of 28 categories of drug use (1). Despite such a fact, many people maybe happy with positive results in Flemington.
However, it seems like common sense that if students are warned, they could be caught getting high any day in school, and they'd be less likely to risk it. It is hard to say that the random test does work because these statistical data are from only some particular areas. On the issue of using random drug tests for high school, rights, accuracy, and survey data have been discussed. Whether or not for school to use random drug tests, people still needs to consider their rights. People also need to think about the costs and the accuracy of the tests. They can not always rely on what school or government says.
People should speak up so that any kind of system can be changed including random drug testing in high school. In order to have a best outcome of random drug testing, both the government and the school need to figure out ways to improve the system.
Free research essays on topics related to: drug tests, high school students, mandatory drug testing, random drug testing, fourth amendment
Research essay sample on Random Illegal Drug Testing Among High School Students
