A Report and Further Debate on School Drug Testing
A carefully designed study of the effects of random testing of student athletes for drug and alcohol use found little evidence of reduced drug use by athletes in schools with random testing policies, and the authors of a report in the November issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health suggest that more research is needed before random drug testing is considered an effective deterrent for school-based athletes.
The two-year prospective randomized controlled study of a single cohort of students in 11 Oregon high schools that either had or did not have policies for random drug and alcohol testing of athletes found that "Student athletes from intervention and control schools did not differ in past one-month use of illicit drug or a combination of drug and alcohol use at any of four follow-up periods." At the final assessment, the student athletes in schools with testing programs also "believed less in testing benefits and less that testing was a reason not to use drugs." The report indicates, however, that the testing schools had better records than the control schools when student athletes were asked about their drug use in the previous year.
In a background editorial accompanying the research report, the Journal of Adolescent Health noted that both opponents and proponents of random testing agree that prevention and detection of drug use by adolescents is a national problem, but "The question of how best to accomplish this goal has not yet been determined."
The editorial points out that debate on whether random drug testing is effective has been going on since the United States Supreme Court ruled in 1995 that random drug testing of athletes is constitutional. In 2002, the Court went even further, ruling that schools have the authority to perform random drug tests on all middle and high school students participating in extracurricular activities. The Supreme Court has not yet said whether laboratory testing of all students in a school, including those who do not participate in extracurricular activities, would be constitutional, "and a national debate has arisen on the merits of drug testing for all students in a school."
Among the questions that can arise, the editorial points out, is whether administering a drug testing program may cause students to switch from use of marijuana, which is relatively less harmful but easily detectable in urine, to use of inhalants, which are relatively more harmful but not readily detectable in urine. There is also the possibility that students may face disciplinary action or other negative consequences on the basis of a false positive drug testing, or that parents, coaches, and administrators will be erroneously assured that a student is not using drugs as the result of a false negative test.
The research report also did not look at the cost of drug testing. High-quality tests such as those used in the study are expensive, and the editorial speculates whether resources may be better spent on evidence-based prevention programs or on establishing more drug treatment programs that are developmentally appropriate for adolescents. It also suggests that less costly approaches to screening, such as confidential interviews of students, might be as effective as laboratory tests in detecting drug use and more effective in identifying high-risk drug use.
The new research may not help to determine whether testing is effective, the editorial concedes, but it raises a lot of questions, both pro and con, and "Policy makers should be cautious in implementing drug testing programs until more of these questions are answered."
The research report, "Outcomes of a Prospective Trial of Student-Athlete Drug Testing Using Random Notification (SATURN) Study," and the editorial, "The National Debate on Drug Testing in Schools," are published in the November 2007 issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health.
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