US WAR ON DRUGS IS INEFFECTIVE WITH STUDENTS

Student involvement in after-school activities has been shown to
reduce drug use. They keep kids busy during the hours they are most
likely to get into trouble. Forcing students to undergo degrading
urine tests as a prerequisite will only discourage participation in
extracurricular activities.

Drug testing may also compel users of marijuana to switch to harder
synthetic drugs to avoid testing positive.

The most commonly abused drug and the one most closely associated with
violent behavior is almost impossible to detect with urinalysis. That
drug is alcohol, and it takes far more student lives every year than
all illegal drugs combined. Instead of wasting money on
counterproductive drug tests, schools should invest in reality-based
drug education. The drug war is in large part a war on marijuana, by
far the most popular illicit drug. Punitive marijuana laws have
little, if any, deterrent value. The University of Michigan's
Monitoring the Future Study reports that lifetime use of marijuana is
higher in the United States than any European country, yet America is
one of the few Western countries that punish citizens who prefer
marijuana to martinis.

Unlike alcohol, marijuana has never been shown to cause an overdose
death, nor does it share the addictive properties of tobacco. The
short-term health effects of marijuana are inconsequential compared to
the long-term effects of criminal records. Unfortunately, marijuana
represents the counterculture to many Americans.

In subsidizing the prejudices of culture warriors, the U.S. government
is subsidizing organized crime.

The drug war's distortion of immutable laws of supply and demand make
an easily grown weed literally worth its weight in gold. The only
clear winners in the war on some drugs are drug cartels and shameless
tough-on-drugs politicians who've built careers on confusing drug
prohibition's collateral damage with a relatively harmless plant.

Robert Sharpe Policy Analyst Common Sense for Drug Policy