Should High School Athletes Be Allowed To Drug Testing Essay

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.

Is doing drugs to enhance one's muscles worth the health risks it might cause? Why would anyone want to give themselves a bad reputation? Who would want to be known for cheating in sports? Although some people believe drug testing is an invasion of privacy, it may just save the athletes from injury. Athletes should be drug tested. Using steroids while playing a sport is counted as cheating, as their improvement comes from drugs. Athletes doing drugs not only gives them, but the team too a bad reputation. Drugs it could affect their long-term health.

Athletes should take drug tests because they might be cheating in their games and competitions. They should take their tests at least once every month and one before they compete in a game to make sure it's fair for everyone. Throughout the years, there have been cases in which the athlete uses drugs right before entering a competition like the Olympics. An African-American woman who was competing in the Olympics used drugs to get an advantage from all the other athletes, and she won the gold medal all the time. Once she was about to retire, she confessed that she was using drugs the whole time and was stripped of all of her gold medals that she won while using her drugs. If she actually tried to win the medal fairly, she could've done it

Another issue of drug testing student athletes is that it is also known to be ineffective. Drug testing will not point out students who are facing drug abuse and will not be able to help them. Studies found no difference between drug use in schools with and without testing. “A 2003 study funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse – the largest of its kind – examined 94,000 students at 900 schools in the U.S. and found no difference between levels of drug use at schools that test their students and those that do not,” (Cosner). Drug use will still be existent in high schools. Studies conclude that drug use in schools that use testing and those that don’t. In fact, students may stop using drugs easy to detect like marijuana, and start using cocaine, heroin, and drugs similar to those. Students who really enjoy getting involved in sports, but have a strong attraction to drugs, may end up using harder drugs so they won’t get caught. As discussed in the article on The New York Times webpage,

After years of delays, rising tensions and hours of discussion, a proposal to randomly drug-test Zionsville High School students was approved Monday night.The Zionsville School Board voted 3-2 in favor of the new policy which requires any students who elect to participate in extracurricular activities or park on school property to consent to random drug tests.Students who fail a drug test will be required to enter and complete a drug counseling program.The approved plan is a variation of one supported years ago by the Zionsville Student Rights Union. They also proposed that only students who park or participate in afterschool programs be tested, but the union plan wanted students to face no consequences at school, and for positive results to

The goal of mandatory drug testing would be to reduce student substance by deterring substance use, detecting substance use, and the influence of the behaviors of students peers. Students involved in extracurricular activities, such as sports that are subject to in school drug testing, report less drug use than students in high school that do not play a sport and do not get drug tested. By drug testing the Athens student body would help by insure a safe, secure, and healthy school environment where students can reach their full academic potential to learn. Athens High schools goal should be to identify students with possible drug abuse issues and to intervene. Students should be required to take drug test to be allowed to park on campus. Less drugs in

The amount of homicides have increased by 7.4 percent in the past few year all of them were drug related. Drug testing High school athletes is a good idea because it has the kids pick a priority in life. It also teaches them responsibility and the consequences

Drug testing has been going on for a long time and they have been used for different occupations. They have been used for teachers, medical jobs, and even jobs people wouldn't think had to have drug tests. The sad thing is they are using them on students. When a person uses drug tests on students for no apparent reason, that's just basically torturing them. This is occurring all throughout America and is really pointless. A child would not want some person they don't really know seeing their personal information and knowing if they are guilty or not. Having drug tests for student athletes is not beneficial because of the Extreme Cost, the Mental Health Effects, and the Fourth Amendment.

But with the random drug testing of the students in school the drug use spiked down a lot. This goes to show that drug testing is very useful for students.

If the high school that you went to did randomized drug testing on athletes would you have been fine with it? Drug testing is violating the athletes Fourth Amendment right. The testing is a waste of money by the school. Drug testing doesn’t deter student athletes from doing drugs if he or she know it is randomized. Randomized drug testing of high school athletes is a bad idea.

“17% of teens drink, smoke, and use drugs during the day in the United States.”(Adler) This is the result of the absence of drug testing in our community, especially in our school. An analysis fact from CDC’s objective Terry Pechacek states that 50 million people do drugs in the united states and 4 million of them are underage and the majority of them are in a high school athletic. Citizens predict that this percentage number will slowly pullulate and gradually more high school athletes will be exposed to drugs. Schools should allow drug tests to be permitted on high school athletes because taking drugs are unfair to the sport, drugs harm the body mentally and physically, and it can ruin future opportunities for athletes if they get scholarships to universities.

“All Athletes should report to the locker room for your Drug Testing”! Why should all athletes be drug tested? Well, it’s very simple - it makes the sport fair and not only that the athlete should remind his/her self that they need to have eligibility to play their sport. Because without that the player won’t be able to play or practice with their team sometimes they can’t even talk to there own teammates. For example Cleveland Browns Wide Receiver Josh Gordon failed his drug test and wasn’t able to play or practice for the entire 2015 NFL season. This example proves that all athletes should be healthy and follow the team's protocol, so they don’t have to deal with not playing the sport they love. So with that being said, All Athletes, should think twice before they do drugs because if not that player will suffer severe consequences of not playing or practicing with their team.

Introducing the fear to students on drug testing that will directly affect them, will most likely decrease the use of drugs being abused. The president of the Institute for Behavior and Health explains that RSDT (Random Student Drug Test) could be used on any athlete, any day, and any time without notice (DuPont et al ¶6). Making the testing random will help eliminate any cheating or strategizing that the students who would test positive could be doing. Keith Ablow, MD and psychiatrist published an article in 2011 said that, both varsity and junior varsity teams should be tested with results kept private (¶6). To only test Varsity athletes would be unacceptable because JV athletes could cause just as much harm to athletes around them as to themselves. To make it fair and because kids follow by example, coaches would test also (Ablow ¶ 9). When a positive test appears, there should be punishment, but not to the extent of expulsion. Guidelines to RSDT programs say it is not supposed to end up in punishment for drug tests (DuPont et al ¶25). Not giving any punishment would defeat the purpose because then kids would not care to stop their drug use. Random drug tests to not only student-athletes, but students in general will promote a healthier lifestyle without drug use (DuPont et al ¶5). Students should be on edge not knowing if they are going to be tested or

As a kid you want everything to be even and fair, the same hope that everything is fair continues into sports and goes through the highest levels. Drug testing in high school sports should be mandatory from all sports and athletes across the country. At the highest college and professional sports levels there are mandatory drugs test taken by every individual player before the season is started. High school athletes are able to get away with using drugs during their sports season because there is no mandatory drug test that is taken. The drug test is a necessity to keep everything even and fair throughout the season of high school sports. Students may take PED’s because they see athletes at the highest level of competitions using them and succeeding to a high extent. High school sports should be fair all across the board and students that use drug make it not fair, mandatory drug test would help with the amount of drug used in high school sports.

High school athletics are not only important to the students and teachers but to the communities as well. Getting together and tailgating at a Friday night football game is an event that can bring towns together. However, lives of high school athletes could be getting torn apart by drug and alcohol abuse. States have to deter students away from drug use somehow, and drug testing is the best way to get the job done ("Texas Set to Drug-Screen”). That is why many states have decided to start drug testing their students involved in extracurricular activities. This leads numerous people to wonder if the testing is actually effective in deterring students from drug and alcohol use, what the punishment would be for those who test positive, and if the testing invades students privacy.