Should Students Have A Mandatory Drug Test

This is a controversial issue as the school disciplinary committee may initiate the system of drug testing at the school even without the approval of parents and guardians of the students at that school.
For example, urine, hair, blood, sweat or saliva can determine the presence or absence of specified parent drugs or their metabolites.

Teenagers should be tested for drugs because it is at this age when they are vulnerable to drug use because they would want to experiment on new ideas, being pressurised into drug activities by their peers and the fear of being left out.
If a school is to have compulsory drug testing it should be done randomly at any given time as a set timetable can easily be beaten by kid abstaining and detoxing before the test.

Basically, for a school to carry out a mandatory drug test, it would depend on the location of the school, the activities carried out at that school and the type of students that learn there depending on how their behaviour is.

Currently in Zimbabwe, the use and abuse of designer drugs seems to be an illness encroaching in some schools where there are students who can afford to buy the stuff.
In other schools there may be isolated cases of marijuana smoking especially among boys but the problem is not really big. Thus, the affected schools are coming up with the proposal for compulsory spot tests for drugs to combat the problem before it gets out of hand.

Students with deplorable behaviour and those that participate in extra-curricular activities should be targeted for random drug tests.
Schools having complications and a higher rate of students using or abusing drugs should carry out this programme as it may reduce or even stop drug use on children at the school.

Repeated drug use can lead to addiction so testing and counselling the intoxicated children while it is early is a better solution.

Alcohol may also be considered as a drug and its use among young people is a serious problem. However, one scholar by the name Christine Tanhira said that ''students should have the compulsory drug test on if suspected of consuming drugs otherwise it will be unnecessary harassment''.

Drug testing does not stop the use of drugs amongst the students as it is quite difficult to refrain drugs once an individual has started consuming them. One major problem is that some drug tests may not be reliable and bring out negative results while in actual fact they are positive or vice versa.
There are some drugs which cannot be detected by the tests for teens and by having more drug tests for teens there will always be increasing ways used to fool the tests.

Drug tests would keep the students away from danger and it can help them in a way by getting off them. Some schools would find it unnecessary to carry out drug tests but at least the school should somehow provide a counselling programme on abuse of drugs and their effects.