Drug Abuse and Importance of Testing in Teens

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According to Monitoring the Future (MTF) survey conducted during 2008, in America nearly 47% of the teens tasted an illicit drug by the time they complete their high school education. As drug abuse is widespread and the students are more sensitive, many schools adopt drug-testing programs to detect drug abuse, to determine student drug abusers, and to recommend for treatment if required.

Teens are vulnerable to drugs

Young people are more vulnerable to drug abuse as they are in their preadolescence stage and not completely matured. They get attracted to the word of assumed benefits rather than understanding the negative effects on the brain, body, behavior, and health. Independent of the age, many other factors make particularly youngsters vulnerable to drugs. Youngsters are often vulnerable to drugs, especially young culprits, youngsters in institutional care like orphanage, students with social or academic problems, and young people who live in underprivileged families or neighborhoods where multiple risk factors and difficulties are concentrated. Marijuana has been widely used illegal drug by the teens, which ruined them, from many years. According to MTF 2008, 42.6 percent of American youth tried Marijuana by the time they completed their high schooling.

Drug testing at Home

Many parents of teenagers are more concerned about their teenagers taking illegal drugs, how to advise them, and what steps to follow to prevent it. It is the parents’ responsibility to protect the child until they develop common sense or maturity of adulthood. Teens may argue against to being tested, imagining that parents don’t “trust” them. Advantages of Home drug testing are, if teens know that random drug test will be conducted in each month, they may feel afraid to take punishments if detected. Another advantage of home-based drug testing policy is that it increases the ability to detect drug use presence at early stages and treatment can be easily provided.

Drug testing at Schools

Drug abuse not only obstructs a student’s ability to learn, but it can also obstruct the teaching environment, affecting other students as well. Schools follow random student drug testing to decrease drug abuse among students. Random testing will provide a restraint, and give students a reason to withstand peer pressure to take drugs. For students who are recognized with addiction of drugs, parents and school administrator can handover them to effective drug treatment programs, to start the recovery process. Many testing methods are available based on testing specimen including urine, hair, saliva, and sweat. All these methods differ in cost, reliability, drugs detected, and detection period. Schools can select the drug testing kit depending on their needs. Generally, these drug testing methods tests for marijuana, cocaine, opioids, amphetamines, PCP, MDMA, GHB, and steroids.

Drug testing at Sports competitions

Event testing is the type of testing i.e. performed for confirmation of prohibited drugs or other performance-enhancing substances used by athletes in the course of particular competition. Teens who contest in sport competitions are more inclined to start steroid or drug use in order to improve performance at their sport like run faster, hit farther, lift heavier weights, jump higher, or have more capacity or tolerance. However, this is against to the law and it causes many health problems. Athlete drug testing is executed at various stages from school athletes to Olympic games. They are conducted to detect the drug abuse of the athletes and put them away. The confirmation of tests is carried out by GC/MS (Gas Chromatography and Mass Spectrometry) method, which detects various chemical features of the drug substances.

A school administrator or a responsible parent should protect youngsters from misuse of drugs, or else they suffer from many health and safety problems. Therefore, focusing on reducing young people towards drug abuse by following suitable methods helps in yielding positive results on the future of the nation.