Below are some of the reasons courts have upheld random drug testing of students.
- With athletes there is a risk of physical harm to the user and other players. Athletes must be healthy to withstand the rigors of sports. Drug use impairs health and reaction time.
- The risk of injury is not isolated only to athletics. The school has a responsibility for the health and safety of its students during all extracurricular activities including traveling to and from such activities and driving on school grounds.
- Extracurricular activities are considered valuable to the school experience.
- Participation in athletics and extracurricular activities may assist students in getting into college. This is a benefit to the students.
- Extracurricular activities, like athletics, are a privilege.
- Random drug testing applies only to students who have voluntarily chosen to participate in such activities. Students are free to not participate and thus avoid a drug test.
- Student athletes and students in extracurricular activities take leadership roles in the school community. They set an example for other students many of whom are vulnerable to illicit drug use. Deterring drug use by athletes and students in extracurricular activities has a beneficial effect on all students.
- Participation in interscholastic athletics and extracurricular activities are benefits carrying enhanced prestige and status in the school and the community and thus it is reasonable to couple these benefits with an obligation to undergo drug testing.
- Students are children under the temporary custody of the government as schoolmaster. The school may exercise a greater degree of supervision and control over students than it would exercise over adults.
- Public school children have a lessor expectation of privacy than the general population because they have to submit to physical examinations, including urine tests, and be vaccinated.
- School athletes have even less of a expectation of privacy because communal undressing is inherent in athletics and they are subject to pre-season physical exams and rules regulating their behavior. Urine tests are part of the physical exams.
- The drug testing process looks only for illegal drugs and not medical conditions and the results are kept confidential.
- Drug use must be deterred. Maturing nervous systems are more critically impaired by intoxicants than mature ones are; childhood losses in learning are lifelong and profound and children grow chemically dependant more quickly than adults, and their record of recovery is depressingly poor.
- Testing is confidential and conducted in a private medical manner. Urine donation in the nurse's office is as private as using the restroom in the school.
- School administrators must have reasonable means at their disposal to deter conduct which can substantially disrupt the school environment.
- Testing gives students a chance to say no to drugs when peers ask them to use drugs.
- Testing provides an opportunity for intervention and treatment.
- Student drug use often occurs before and after school when students are not under regular and constant supervision.
- The effects of drug use outside of school carry over to school activities.
- It is difficult to detect drug use from observation alone.
- Schools have used all other available methods to deter drug use and testing is a helpful addition.
- Students have a right to safe and drug-free learning environment.
For further information, contact David G. Evans, Esq., Drug-Free Schools Coalition, at 908-788-7077, fax 908-788-9504 or e-mail at thinkon908@aol.com. He needs information on drug use in schools. Financial contributions are welcome.
