Drugs and Testing: Looking at the Big Picture
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| 9-Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active chemical ingredient of the marijuana plant. Image courtesy of Project MathMol, Scientific Visualization Lab, New York University. |
Imagine a surgeon turning down the opportunity to use a powerful medical procedure that is government-approved, affordable, available, easy to use, and potentially life-saving.
It makes no sense.
The same could be said about schools that pass up a promising new technique for combating the scourge of substance abuse: random student drug testing. As any good surgeon knows, better methods bring better results.
Parents and educators have a responsibility to keep young people safe from drug use. In recent years we have made solid, measurable progress toward that end. According to the latest national survey in the Monitoring the Future series, the proportion of 8th-, 10th-, and 12th-grade students combined who use illicit drugs continued to fall in 2006, the fifth consecutive year of decline for these age groups. Similarly, results of the 2005 Youth Risk Behavior Survey show that rates of current marijuana use among high school students have dropped from a peak of 26.7 percent in 1999 to 20.2 percent.
This is good news, to be sure, but hardly reason to drop our guard. Consider: In 2006, according to Monitoring the Future, a fifth (21 percent) of today's 8th graders, over a third (36 percent) of 10th graders, and about half (48 percent) of 12th graders in America had tried illegal drugs at some point in their lives. Proportions indicating past-year drug use were 15 percent, 29 percent, and 37 percent, respectively, for the same grade levels.
Marijuana remains the greatest single drug threat facing our young people. Past-year marijuana use among 18- to 25-year-olds (the group with the highest drug-use rates) fell 6 percent from 2002 to 2005, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. And yet, despite reduced rates in this and other user categories, marijuana still ranks as the most commonly used of all illicit drugs, with a rate of 6 percent—14.6 million current users—for the U.S. population age 12 and older. This is particularly disturbing because marijuana use can lead to significant health, safety, social, and learning or behavioral problems, and kids are the most vulnerable to its damaging effects.
Adding more cause for concern is the emergence of new threats, such as prescription-drug abuse. Over the past decade, youth populations have more than tripled their non-medical use of prescription drugs. Nearly one in five teens has taken prescription medications to get “high,” according to a recent study by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America.
Our task, then, is to keep forging ahead and working to defeat drug abuse wherever it should arise. And to do this, we need all the help we can get. It is vital that we make use of the best tools at our disposal to protect young people from a behavior that destroys bodies and minds, impedes academic performance, and creates barriers to success.
Drug testing is just such a tool. For decades, drug testing has been used effectively to help reduce drug use in the U.S. Military and the Nation’s workforce. Now this strategy is available to any school that understands the devastation of drug use and is determined to push back. Many of our schools urgently need effective ways to reinforce their anti-drug efforts. A random drug testing program can help them.
In June 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court broadened the authority of public schools to test students for illegal drugs. The ruling allows random drug tests not just for student athletes, but for all middle and high school students participating in competitive extracurricular activities. School administrators, however, need to consult with their counsels about any additional state law requirements regarding student drug testing.
Scientists know that drug use can interfere with brain function, learning, and the ability to retain information (see “The Biology of Drug Addiction”). Any drug use at school disrupts the learning environment for all students. It spreads like a contagious disease from peer to peer and is, in this regard, nothing less than a public health threat. Schools routinely test for tuberculosis and other communicable diseases that jeopardize student health. Clearly, there is every reason to test for drugs as well.
It is important to understand that random student drug testing is not a panacea or an end in itself. Nor is it a substitute for other techniques or programs designed to reduce drug use by young people. Testing is only part of the solution and cannot do the job alone. For maximum effectiveness, it should be used in combination with other proven strategies in a comprehensive substance-abuse prevention and treatment program.
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Schools considering adding a testing program to their current prevention efforts will find reassurance in knowing drug testing can be done in a way that is compassionate and respectful of students’ privacy, pride, and dignity. The purpose of testing, after all, is not to punish or stigmatize kids who use drugs. Rather, it is to prevent drug use in the first place, and to make sure users get the help they need before the disease of addition can spread. Drug testing is also affordable. Discussions with individual schools indicate that, on average, a high school with 1,000 students will spend approximately $1,500 a year to test 70 students, or 10 percent of the pool of eligible students.
As the number of schools with testing programs grows, so does the body of evidence suggesting that random student drug testing can have beneficial effects on school morale. Students feel safer participating in an activity when they know their classmates are drug-free. As former drug users get and stay clean, they make healthier and better choices about how to spend leisure time, and they are more likely to engage in school activities. School pride and spirit increase as students, parents, and the school community become more involved in the school environment.