Student Drug Testing

Does random drug testing of students reduce drug use?

As we reported earlier, the U.S. States Deparment and Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) organized a regional conference in Budapest last December, where government officials attempted to convince their European colleagues to take into consideration the adoption of “best practices” from America, especially school drug testing, presented as a success story at the event. Since than, ONDCP have made further efforts to advertize random testing of students at other international gatherings, for example at the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) in March. Calvina Fay, the executive director of the Partnership for a Drug Free America made an emotional appeal to the Beyond 2008 global NGO forum this May, claiming that school drug testing is an evidence-based demand reduction tool. Unfortunately we cannot show you this speech because we were banned from showing films from the plenary (see our earlier blog and video on this issue), but we interviewed a couple of people about this controversial issue. Unfortunately only one supporter of school drug testing was willing to comment, other like-minded NGO delegates refused to give an interview. Opponents of drug testing argue in our video that to randomly drug test students and exclude them from extracurricular activites is not an effective and ethical way to protect young people from abusing drugs. They refer to a study conducted by researchers of the University of Michigan among 76.000 students. This study showes that drug use was not significantly lower in those schools where drug testing was applied, what is more, drug testing had some unintended consequences as well.

 Watch our video and learn more!

Posted by Peter Sarosi

If you would like to comment on this article please go to the mirror page on our Drug Policy website!

Share

Related articles

WHERE IS THE JUSTICE? - Sex Work in Hungary

"If someone works in the bakery, she sells bread. I am a sexworker, I sell my body, but I do not sell my soul." The HCLU produced a short documentary about sex work in Hungary, and about how the Association of Hungarian Sex Workers (SZEXE) tries to help and empower sex workers.

Institutions are hegemonic - new mental health report on Europe published

"Despite far-reaching changes in some countries institutions are still the dominant form of service-provison in many countries in Europe" - Mental Health Europe's new report 'Mapping Exclusion' starts with this synthetic observation, which is documented with 32 state-reports.

Pharma Greed Kills

Activists at the International AIDS Conference disrupt a session sponsored by the pharmaceutical giant, Roche - why did they take action? Watch the HCLU's movie and learn more!