DRUG TESTING IN SCHOOLS: CAN IT CAUSE HARM?

Many schools and districts are performing drug tests or are considering
drug screens for students entering competitive sports, other physical
extracurricular activities such as school band and cheerleading, and
non-active, extracurricular activities such as chess club or the debate
team. A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling permits this to occur. Local
school districts need not adopt this practice, however, and states are
still permitted to disallow this practice to protect individual rights
within the state's constitution.

Where student drug testing is currently practiced, students testing
positive are typically excluded from their desired extracurricular activity
until they are cleared with another screen. Other consequences of a drug
screen may include punitive measures, counseling, therapy, and
rehabilitation - with variation from one district to the next. There are
also significant degrees of variation between districts for the drug tests
performed (such as urine versus hair sample, various drugs that are and are
not screened).

Most of us readily accept drug testing for certain employees. This protects
the public from having intoxicated pilots, bus drivers and police. In
contrast, drug testing of adolescents is not done for safety of the public.
The hopes for drug-testing programs at school are that it will be easier
for students to say "no" to drugs after they join a school activity, that
random checks will keep students from trying these substances, and that
safety will be improved for those engaged in sports.

So far, studies have not shown drug testing to be a deterrent. It has yet
to be established that students who are interested in sports and
extracurricular activities, and who are also substance users, are more
likely to go on to have serious problems than those who do not seek these
activities. In fact, there is evidence that quite the opposite is true;
that is, those who do not seek to engage in extracurricular activities are
more likely to go on to have drug-abusing problems.

Most importantly, it is yet to be established that drug testing does not
cause harm. The potential for harm includes:

- -- Screening may decrease involvement in extracurricular activities among
students who regularly use or have once used drugs. Without such engagement
in healthy activities, adolescents are more likely to drop out of school,
become pregnant, join gangs, pursue substance abuse, and engage in other
risky behaviors.

- -- An unsafe home environment is one predictor for drug abuse in
adolescents. Screening may cause deterioration, rather than an improvement,
in home situations as a result of a positive test.

- -- Screening may cause emotional difficulty related to the invasion of a
person's privacy. There is a great deal of variation to how adults respond
to drug testing - most don't mind at all, some consider it very intrusive.
During adolescence, many teens feel estranged from their ever-changing
bodies - even when there are no intrusions. A sizable minority of healthy
adolescents who are not abusing drugs will experience an inordinate degree
of stress as a result of mandated tests. The Supreme Court may not feel
that adolescents joining extracurricular activities have the right to
protest these intrusions, but this does not mean that adolescents don't
need us to provide them those rights, given their developmental stage.

- -- Dollars spent on drug testing programs may be drawn from school-based
drug prevention programs that have shown to be effective (Botvin's Life
Skills Program).

Until we have the evidence that we need to be certain that we are not
causing harm, drug testing and screening programs in school should be
limited to carefully controlled programs designed to research these
programs' potential harm, potential benefits and cost-benefits.