The fourth amendment states that there must be a clear reason or individualized suspicion when a search occurs. When there are random drug tests this is not the case. Sandra Day O’Connor supports this. She is a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. She said that blanket searches involve thousands or millions of searches pose a greater threat to liberty than suspicion based ones. This is because suspicion based ones affect one person at a time. She thinks that randomly testing students for drugs violates there right to privacy. She says the best way to protect a student’s right to privacy is to perform drug tests only on those who can be reasonably suspected of using drugs.
Students might not join an athletic team because they do not want to be drug tested. If a student tests positive, the teachers might look down on them. They could single them out for a bad grade. Random drug testing damages relationships. It could be parent-child or teacher-student. Drug testing young people when they are not actually suspected of using drugs sends the message to them that they are not to be trusted. Many students find that drug testing is very intolerable and intrusive on there privacy. The millions of students who participate in interscholastic sports, overwhelming majorities have given the school no reason whatsoever to suspect they use drugs at school, are open to an open intrusive bodily search. It is not right to make these kids who have never done any drugs to submit to an unreasonable drug test.
Many student-athletes will want to get around the random drug testing. One method they might use is to stop using marijuana and switch to a drug that will not stay in their system for days. They could use drugs such as cocaine and methamphetamine. These drugs which are more harmful exit the body quickly so they usually go undetected by drug testing. This would be a very harmful effect of random drug testing. This will cause an even worse drug problem in schools.
Random drug testing might encourage schools to be more selective in which students they test. This can result in student profiling. Schools might even start targeting certain students for testing based on their racial and economic background. There is no way the government can effectively regulate how the schools choose their victim.
Random drug testing is not cheap. It costs between 15-30 dollars per drug test. There have been many examples of schools starting random drug testing and then stopping because of the cost. Ohio ended its drug testing policy, after spending $70,000 to test 1,473 students over two years and getting only twenty positive results. They decided the money would be better spent on hiring a full-time drug and alcohol counselor. This proves that drug testing is a waste of time and money. Where is this money going to be coming from? The budget already is tight. There will be less money for all the other school activities.
There are many other approaches to stop drug use. The school could start a Drug education program or even an after school drug program. There could be drug counselors at the school. These alternatives would be more cost efficient. These are proven to help stop drug use, while drug testing has not.
Many parents prefer to trust their kids unless given a reason to do otherwise. This is why it should be the parents decision to drug test their kids or not. This is only if they are under the age of eighteen. If a school decides to test it takes away the parental decision making power. It is not the schools job to jump in and regulate the kids. There is no reason why the school should be able to regulate what you do with your own body. The purpose of school is to educate. When schools try to regulate its kids, it is human nature for them to try to rebel.
