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| Agree | 44% | 602 votes | Total: 1372 votes | |
| Disagree | 56% | 770 votes |
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Add to FavoritesThere should be mandatory drug testing in all public schools for administrators, teachers, and students. For too many years now schools have been getting away with allowing children to use their bathrooms for illegal drug use.
Parents who don't use drugs are the last to find out when their children have been using drugs in school.
Schools should be safe havens for caring parents to send their children, not places where children are taught things they wouldn't learn in their own homes.
Parents who don't use drugs are innocent. If the flow of illegal drugs into our country can not be stopped, we as concerned citizens should at least feel our children are safe in our school systems.
Parents always learn too late. A case in point is where a six-year-old boy was given drugs on the playground by a drug dealer. At some point the drug dealer told the six-year-old that he would have to pay for his drugs and gave him a gun. The little boy went into a store and shot and killed the store clerk.
Another parent learned too late also when her daughter at the age of 17 began having mental problems caused by drug use - one of her schoolmates had given her drugs at the age of 13 on her way walking to school. The parent was a substitute at the daughter's high school but did not know also that the students were smoking marijuana in the bathrooms. She never visited the children's bathrooms.
Another parent also learned too late when her son tried to commit suicide and then discovered that all the peanut plants she thought her son was growing were really marijuana plants. He told her they were peanut plants and she believed him. Why wouldn't she? We always trust our children until it is too late.
Drug use in the United States is in a catastrophic state. How else can we stem the tide of illegal drug use but to enact and enforce stringent drug use laws. There should be no drug use in public schools.
Public schools are places for learning not places to breed illegal activities. And drug use isn't just an illegal act it is dangerous for the health and well being of our children who are still growing and developing.
All public schools should be drug free, not just middle schools and high schools, but also elementary schools.
Many children who use drugs come from families who use drugs. But these children should not be allowed to influence students who do not come from drug families. Most likely children from drug-free families would never use drugs if it were not for encouragement by their peer group. Is this called socialization? Children don't need this kind of socialization.
As a nation we have let the drug situation get out of hand by not understanding that drugs like marijuana are dangerous drugs due to drug propaganda that tells everyone that marijuana will not hurt you.
In reality marijuana is as dangerous as any drug and more cancer causing than tobacco
The statistics
According to information at www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bj s/def/du.htm in 2003 statistics from 35 metropolitan areas revealed that one-half of drug misuse deaths involved one of the following drugs: cocaine, heroin, marijuana, stimulants, club drugs, hallucinogens, or non-pharmaceutical inhalants.
Facts about marijuana:
1) Short term effects
* problems with memory and learning
* distorted perceptions
* difficulty in thinking and problem solving
* loss of coordination
* increased heart rate
2) Long term effects are the same as for any of the other drugs.
3) The risk of heart attack more than quadruples in the first hour after smoking marijuana.
4) Has the potential for increased cancer risk. Marijuana smoke has 50 to 70% more carcinogenic hydrocarbons than tobacco smoke.
5) Marijuana impairs the immune system's ability to fight disease.
6) Chronic marijuana use is associated with depression, anxiety, and personality disturbances.
7) Job skills, intellectual skills, and social skills decrease with continued use of marijuana.
8) Students who smoke marijuana get lower grades and are less likely to graduate from high school.
9) Smoking marijuana every day is directly correlated with a reduced intellectual level all of the time.
Marijuana is just one of the drugs used by children and others in public school systems. Cocaine and meth amphetamine are also dangerous drugs that are being used by students. Many students are also using over the counter drugs and prescription drugs.
If you want your children to do better in school you need to take away the drugs and make mandatory drug testing available for all school students and school officials. This might seem harsh but we have been asleep while these forces have taken over our schools, our children, and our country. We need to reclaim the United States for the United States and for the people of the United States, if at this late stage it is possible.
Reference:
www.nida.nih.gov/inf ofacts/marijuana.htm l
Learn more about this author, Colette Georgii.
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Disagree
Mandatory drug testing on students in public schools is going to cause more problems than it is able to solve. As a former teacher, I have seen obvious evidence that students who come to school clean and sober learn more than students who arrive at school stoned or drunk. This is clear. I am not arguing that students should be allowed to arrive at school impaired by drugs. What I am saying is that mandatory drug testing on public school students is ultimately going to be more disruptive than helpful.
Who is going to pay to have all those students tested for drugs? Most public school systems are struggling financially. More and more school districts are resorting to having students share textbooks, because there simply isn't enough money to provide each student with his or her own. The reality is that few public school districts are going to have the extra funds on hand to be able to cover the cost involved in having each and every one of their students drug tested.
If the public schools cannot pay for the mandatory drug testing, does that mean the parents will be expected to cover the costs? This brings up more issues. Some parents will be financially able to pay for their child to be tested for drugs, and will also be willing to do so. But what about the parents who really cannot afford the cost of having their child drug tested? Is this something the Federal Government will provide the funding for, similar to the way it provides funding to allow disadvantaged students to eat lunch and breakfast for free? Getting your child on the "free lunch program" takes time, and there is a lot of paperwork to fill out to prove that you are really financially unable to pay for your child to eat. It is likely that the paperwork required to prove that you really cannot afford to pay for drug testing will be just as tedious. So, what do you do with those students in the meantime? Will students whose parent cannot pay for the drug testing be allowed to attend school without being tested, alongside students who have undergone the mandatory drug tests? If so, can we really consider these drug tests to be "mandatory" anymore? Or, will students whose parents cannot afford drug testing be banned from the public schools until a drug test can be paid for and administered? Where do these students go instead of school? Is it even legal to block students from attending public school simply because they have not been tested for drugs?
Another thing to consider is that not all parents are going to be willing to have their children tested for drugs. This is a hot topic for many people. There will be heated arguments, both for and against this mandatory testing. Sorting this out is not going to be simple, or pretty, or quickly accomplished. This is the sort of issue that can divide communities, sometimes for years, sometimes forever. You have to consider if enforcing mandatory drug testing of all the public school students is really worth having this much animosity poisoning the very air of your community. You can't un-ring this bell.
One important thing that most people who argue for mandatory drug testing of public school students do not seem to realize is that if your goal is to be certain that all students in all schools are constantly "clean" from drug an alcohol use, that this is going to require more than one test per student. Testing all students for drugs at the beginning of the school year only tells you what drugs they might have done over the summer break, and says nothing at all about what drugs the student might now be using while attending public school. But, even if you choose to test students for drugs sometime later on in the school year, you are still going to send the message to students who are inclined to use drugs or alcohol that they are "safe" to do so now that they have passed their annual drug test. One mandatory drug test is not going to solve anything. Adults who have been in trouble with the law for drug related issues and end up on probation are required to submit to more than one drug test, to help prove that they are staying drug free. If you really are going to require mandatory drug testing for all public school students in an effort to force all students to be drug free at all times, the reality is that you will need multiple drug tests for each and every student in all public schools. Each required drug test is going to open up the whole can of worms described in the above paragraphs all over again.
These problems are just the tip of the iceberg. What happens if a student does not pass a drug test? Can he or she still attend school, or will there be a requirement that a rehabilitation program be attended? Who pays for that? How do you decide what drugs you are going to test for in the first place? Do you stick to testing for marijuana and cocaine? Will you include over the counter drugs such as caffeine pills? How do you differentiate between students who are using high doses of antihistamines or drugs designed to help with concentration (such as ritalin) because of actual need, from students using those drugs for recreational purposes? Can you separate students who smoke cigarettes from students who live in homes where other people are smoking cigarettes? Do you start testing students when they enter high school, or will you start testing junior high school students as well? What about the elementary school students? Things are going to get really sticky.
No one wants their child to have to attend school and sit next to kids who are on drugs. No teacher wants to be responsible for students who come to school high or drunk. Mandatory drug testing of all public school students is not going to fix this problem. It will only create more.
Learn more about this author, Jen Thorpe.
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