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It seems that our society is ever-changing. More and more facets of our society are beginning to revolve around questions of mistrust. Sadly enough public school systems too have fallen victim to this mistrust. Because the illegal use of drugs has trickled down to high schools; a serious question regarding America's youth has arisen. A question of whether or not it is right to drug test high school students. Because our youth is constantly looked at as an indicator for the future of our society, many people feel it is important to encourage our youth to avoid illegal drugs through the use of drug screening. While others feel that it is merely an unnecessary invasion of privacy and an infringement on our constitutional rights. Although the Supreme Court ruled it legal in 1995 to test high school athletes for drug use, it is still a controversial issue today.
Ever since the 1980's random drug screenings at workplaces have been questioned because of the debate over the unknown stability of these test results. Now that the mistrust of drug use in our society has fallen to high school athletes it still remains a divisive issue in todays society, of weather or not to randomly drug test high school athletes. In the 2002 case of Board of Education of Pottawatomie County v. Earl, the court ruled that the privacy of students who participate in extracurricular activities is not violated by random drug testing. There is a wide variety of drug testing methods ranging from hair and urine samples, to saliva and blood tests, and even sweat patches (Summary). Since the ruling in 2002, federal money given to schools for random drug testing has increased tremendously and the timing could not have been any better. One year earlier in 2001, a popular magazine conducted a survey of high schools student athletes to see how many had used some kind of illicit drug; the results showed that half the students surveyed had at least experimented once with a drug...