Study: Random Drug Testing Is Effective
(AP) - Student-athletes subject to random drug testing at an Oregon high school were almost four times less likely to use drugs than their counterparts at a similar school who were not tested, a study shows. The one-year pilot study by researchers at Oregon Health & Sciences University compared Wahtonka High School in The Dalles, where all student-athletes were subject to random testing, and Warrenton High School, a demographically similar school near Astoria, where they were not
This is the "no shit Sherlock" story of the year. If you randomly piss test high school students, they are less likely to do drugs than students that are not randomly drug tested. My complaint here is simple -- the headline. "Study: Random Drug Testing Is Effective" is the header. Unfortunately the study has very little to do with random drug testing. The study researched the numbers at one Oregon high school that did random testing and demographically similar school that did not. Guess what, fewer kids used drugs at the school that tested. Well, surprise surpise! The headline overreaches and claims that random drug testing is "effective" without stating "at what" or under "what condition".
An aside: The study was to be a pilot program for a 13 high school three year study that was suspended after the Office of Human Research Policy "expressed concerns about some of the methodology used in the study's latter two years" that included financial incentives for participating schools and not obtaining consent from the children studied.
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