Word: drugging
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Probably not. No studies I found have looked at the specific issue of whether random drug tests affect substance use among teachers. But several studies have examined the impact of random testing in another school population - students. In the most comprehensive study on the subject to date, a 2003 University of Michigan study involving 894 middle and high schools found that random student drug-testing tends to reduce marijuana use slightly (about 5%) but actually increase the use of other drugs (about 3%). The authors theorize that drug-using kids may think that prescription and other drugs are harder...
Even after the University of Michigan authors controlled for socioeconomic differences among students and schools, they found no statistically meaningful difference in drug-use rates among students who attended schools that randomly drug-tested and those who didn't. In short, kids weren't deterred from using drugs even when they knew they might be surprised one day with an order to pee into...
Still, the behavior of high school kids doesn't neatly correspond to that of their teachers - they may well change their behavior in response to random tests. Which leads to a more fundamental question: If we are serious about drug enforcement, why not require every American, or at least every American who comes into contact with children, to be tested randomly? (See pictures of a diverse group of American teens...
...answer is cost. In the West Virginia drug-testing case, which is currently working its way through the federal court system, Judge Joseph Goodwin of the U.S. District Court noted that it costs about $44 a pop to do urine tests, which would cost the West Virginia school district in question about $37,000 a year. (Here's a PDF of Goodwin's preliminary injunction against drug-testing.) That same $37,000 could easily pay for a full-time teacher, meaning that drug-testing would have to be sufficiently valuable to displace an entire teaching position...
...evidence suggests that drug use among teachers is not exactly a pressing problem. In 2007, the Department of Health and Human Services published a major study showing that people who work in education rank 18th out of 19 listed professions in the use of illicit drugs. (Those who work in food service, arts, retail and "information" services - like, um, journalists - were among the major offenders.) Only 4% of educators reported use of illegal drugs in the previous month, compared with 14% of construction workers, who work in a much more dangerous environment. The 4% figure for teachers is still...