Before I start this article I’m going to point out that I do not support drugs, nor do I do drugs. That being said, I believe random drug testing in schools is one of the most ridiculous things that are implemented in my school. Out of all the kids in my school that have been drug tested the only drug that has shown up yet is marijuana. That is really no surprise when one joint can stay in your system up to a month, while more severe drugs like cocaine, heroin, meth, prescription pills, and other narcotics only stay in your system for about 3 days. So in theory if we have a long weekend someone could shoot up heroin Friday night then get drug tested Monday and pass. The real problem comes in when people think to themselves “Wow, I can either smoke this joint and probably get suspended from school, or snort this oxycontin and not get caught”. Obviously the better option for you health wise is to just smoke some weed. You’re probably thinking “would someone actually rather do hard drugs than get caught smoking a little grass?” The answer to that is yes, and I’ve seen it happen. One of my good friends (who will remain nameless) got addicted to pills this year and has recently dropped out of school to retrieve the treatment he needed. I know for a fact that the only reason he started taking pills was because he wasn’t worried about it showing up on the drug tests. Just last summer he was a fully functional teenager with a lot to look forward to. He would smoke occasionally but knew how to keep it under control, but the pills’ extreme addictiveness grabbed a hold of him and he was done before he realized it. One more point I’m going to bring up here is the new synthetic marijuana that’s going around. It’s advertised to have the same effect as normal weed but that is incredibly false advertising. This stuff is extremely addictive, has terrible side effects, and is not even studied by the government properly. There have been cases of kids overdosing on it and actually dying. And it’s only getting more and more popular as schools begin to drug test because it doesn’t show up on tests at all. If schools would just look at the facts and see how they are affecting their own students with these tests I believe they would stop them. But unfortunately that probably won’t ever happen and more and more kids will suffer because of these drug testing policies.