There’s nothing your average high schooler enjoys more than waking up bright and early on a Monday morning, arriving to school, and finding him or herself forced to pee in a cup.

Such is, unfortunately, the case for this year. In an effort to eradicate the use of illegal substances among high school students, ASFM has recently instituted a random (and in some cases, targeted) drug testing policy for students and teachers in grades 9 through 12. The inspection is an expected and understandable reaction to the incidents involving narcotics that have occurred in our student and staff community.

Yet even the best of intentions do not necessarily lead to righteous, ethical solutions. While it is often the thought that counts, the implementation of these tests creates only a misdirected, fleeting sort of change in the ASFM community.

For one thing, a survey completed by over a hundred ASFM students in September goes to exhibit the drug test’s overall ineffectiveness. While only 2.4 percent of those polled would consider experimenting with narcotics even with the risk of an impending examination, the number rises to 8 percent once they are finished with high school.

This, unfortunately, highlights a naive incongruence found in promoting healthy lifestyle choices as the key to a better future, all the while advocating for a system that only truly generates change while students are a part of the American School. It is in this way that the drug test has manifested itself into an entity that feeds off students’ inherent fear of consequence, and not their willingness to change.

Furthermore, and regardless of the fact that these inspections are totally within the law, the loss of freedom these tests imply genuinely feels like an invasion of privacy. In a way, it is as though an unspoken barrier between student and teenage life has been breached; a boundary I sincerely believe never needed crossing.

After all, there are more effective and durable ways of tackling such an imperative issue. According to the Canadian National Crime Prevention Centre, the most successful school-based drug prevention programs are those that are interactive and youth-focused, and contain committed personnel that can genuinely relate with and engage teens. It is important to cease undermining the voices of young adults throughout this process. By and large, a school’s job is to educate and adapt, not to police, and engaging in safe conversation without fear of consequence is the most certain route towards attaining a solution that is both relevant and efficient in today’s dynamic adolescent society.