Drug Testing Students In Competitive Sports

In many high schools around the country, student athletes are using drugs. “The percent of students that have drunk alcohol is 72.5% while the number of students who have used marijuana is 36.8%” (Report: Nearly Half of High School Students Using Drugs, Alcohol). The students believe that since they are athletes that they do not need to abide by the rules because they feel more superior and that the narcotic will not hurt or affect them. Implementing random drug tests for athletes will create a positive image and not hurt others or themselves. Schools need to have drug tests for student athletes because drugs effect relationships, using drugs have consequences, and lastly they have a major effect on the body.

The petitioner, Vernonia School District, is being advocated for by attorney Timothy R. Volpert. The petitioner believes that the drug testing does not violate the fourth amendment, and that they should be allowed to drug test all student athletes due to an increased risk of injury. A point was brought up by the justices that there was only one athlete that had actually been reported using drugs, and questioned the need for the

Drug testing athletes or even just college students is against the students and Linn State’s fourth amendment rights. College students have the right to be secure in themselves, house, and papers. “On the con side of the argument, the American Civil Liberties Union along with with students attending Linn State say that drug testing of all college students is against the law and violation of their fourth amendment right” (Clabaugh 3). According to Jason Clabaugh, students have a right to not be drug tested because of their fourth amendment of having the right to be secure of themselves. Also sometimes test can lead to false positives. “On the con side of testing the college student athlete population, drug tests can often lead to false positives” (Clabaugh 4). Although, it’s likely to be a false positive it might not

The use of illegal substances is rapidly increasing in the college sports due to the expansion of supplements used by athletes that are being banned. In a study done, athletes were asked if illicit drugs would negatively impact their performance. Majority of them responded “yes”, their main reasoning being; the effects of illicit drugs were both mental and physically damaging. Illicit drugs come in many forms, but the testing procedures are all the same for any substance. There is almost always a consequence with the use of prohibited substances. Drug testing is appropriate to help ensure the safety of student athletes while they participate in intercollegiate contests. (Krotee, M 555).

New Jersey statute N.J.A.C. 6A:16-4.4 raises a host of legal and financial issues for school district administrators. According to the law, when it comes to random testing of student alcohol and other drug use, districts that decide to do random drug tests must follow certain protocols to ensure students’ 4th Amendment rights are not violated.

The school board of Vernonia, Oregon implemented this policy in their school. This applied even more so to athletes, who were seen as the “leaders of the drug culture” at the time. The policy “...required all those who wished to play on interscholastic athletic teams to submit to urinalysis drug testing.” (“Vernonia School District. [Brit.]) In the year 1991, after the policy was put into place for two years, a student challenged the policy. He, known by the name of James Acton, as well as his parents, refused to sign a consent form for the drug testing. Due to this, he was not allowed to be a part of football team, and is what led to their first trials. They were named “Wayne and Judy Acton, guardians ad litem (representing) for James Acton v. Vernonia School District 47J”. In these very first cases, the plaintiff were the Actons, and the defendant was the school district. The family lost in the U.S District Court, but later had the decision overturned by Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, who claimed that the district had truly violated Acton’s Fourth Amendment rights. The school district attempted to overturn the decision again, which led to the Supreme Court case, Vernonia School District 47J v. Acton,

2. The Supreme Court established that a warrant isn’t necessary in school due to the fact that students aren’t under the protection of police officers but instead by the school. The court decided that a search is reasonable if a) “specific facts, together with rational inference from those facts, justified the intrusion, and b) the search was reasonably related in scope to the circumstances justifying it. Also, there can be random drug testing for students in school involved in extracurricular activities, and

Constitutional issues in this case are the student is not given his First Amendment rights and also the Due Process a Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The right to freedom of speech and due process are both laws that anyone should be following and anyone making a decision toward a case needs to consider these because they are apart of the amendments and rights to the people. However, in this case they ruled that Bethel High School was not wrong and didn't take away his

In response to the issues, the school district made an effort to quell the issue by inviting speakers, and several different presentations to limit the drug use of students help the comprehend it’s dangers and negative impacts. However, this did not stop the problem. To solve this issue, a policy of drug testing had been adopted. One student in particular, James Acton-- had refused to participate in these random testing. Upon his refusal, he was then denied participation in his school’s American Football Program. After this case was taken to the Supreme Court, an argument for James Acton was that the random drug testing policy violated the clauses in the 4th amendment that protected for unreasonable searching. The Supreme Court decided that the search was in fact reasonable due to the schools attempt to quell the issue of drug use and keep students safe. The majority opinion stated that the search was reasonable. There was hard evidence that there was definitely a drug problem in the school. To quote an excerpt from acclaimed author Johnson Scott F “Fourth Amendment rights, no less than First and Fourteenth Amendment rights, are different in public schools than elsewhere; the "reasonableness" inquiry cannot disregard the schools ' custodial and tutelary responsibility for children. For their own good and that of their classmates, public school children are routinely required to submit to various physical examinations and to be vaccinated

I stand before you, in this court, to try and sway the majority decision regarding Safford United School District v. Redding (June 5, 2009). With agreeance of Justice Clarence Thomas, the act of searching Ms. Redding for drugs that violated the school’s policy, was not a direct violation of her fourth amendment right. It is no secret that maintaining order in any school environment can be a challenging task. It is more evident in today’s society school officials must take an even more proactive stance, when it does come down to maintaining order. With the recent surge of violent crimes and drug abuse that plague our schools, officials should have the right to try to prevent these actions from perpetuating into an epidemic.

The Supreme Court set a precedent on school searches with the case of New Jersey v. T.L.O. In that particular case, a student was observed smoking in the bathroom of the high school. The student denied smoking and upon search of her belongings by the assistant vice principal, a pack of cigarettes were found along with rolling papers. Since there is a parallel between rolling papers and marijuana, the assistant vice principal decided to further search her purse and found marijuana, empty

The Court ruled that it did not violate students' federal or state constitutional rights to be free from unreasonable searches. The Court reasoned that the state, as schoolmaster of children, must exercise a degree of supervision and control greater than it could exercise over adults. They also said that public school children have lesser privacy expectations with regard to medical examinations and procedures than the general population, and student athletes have even less legitimate privacy expectation. The school district had immediate and legitimate concern in preventing student athletes from using drugs.

In the Tinker V. Des Moines Independent community school district case students were involved in a silent protest against the Vietnam war. The school tried to prevent the students from protesting by telling them that if they wore their black armbands they would be suspended until they agreed to take them off. The U.S. District Court sided with the school saying that the bands could disrupt the children from their work. The students appealed the case to the Court of Appeals but lost. They then took their case to the Supreme Court (Tinker V. Des Moines Independent School District).

Slowly pushing students to become addicts, drug testing high school student athletes may or may not be to blame. In Facts & Statistics on Random Drug Testing of High School Students, Dr. M.H. Davis stated, “In the early 1990s, many school districts began to look into drug testing as a way to curb student drug use, which led to two U.S. Supreme Court cases involving student privacy. The court upheld the constitutionality of drug testing student athletes in 1995, and in 2002, the court expanded high school drug testing policies to include all students who participate in a competitive extracurricular activity. In those rulings, the court stated deterring student drug use was more important than privacy” (Davis). Drug testing high school athletes

2. The issue is whether public school districts can perform random drug screening of students who participate in school athletic programs under state or federal law.