The argument that drug testing actually causes more harm to society rather than helping it as professed has been gaining ground in the last few years. Although drug testing was conceptualized and implemented with the purpose of reducing the damage that is being done to society by drugs, the reality of the effects of drug testing seems to be quite different.



Drug testing has advanced into schools, the military and the workplace in a steady pace. The whole purpose is to promote a healthy environment free of drugs and promote the zero tolerance policy on drug abuse. But is the entire drug testing campaign actually reducing the drug abuse rate or is it really compounding the problem by driving the guilty party to the wall.

When a person is screened and found to be guilty of drug abuse, he is not always subjected to rehabilitation and assisted recovery as we may tend to believe. A person found to be abusing drugs may have to undergo imprisonment, may lose his job and even lose the custody of his children. The point of concern is that a person detected during drug testing could possibly undergo punishment that would actually reduce his ties with society and decrease the chances of his return to a normal life.

It is not just the workplace that is under the shadow of drug testing. Earlier drug testing in schools fell in the grey area of the law and was avoided for a while. But the US Supreme courts have now approved drug testing in students of public schools who participate in extracurricular activities like sports, and there is general consensus that this will expand to include all students in the future. A student who is tested and found to have used drugs can be expelled for this reason alone. Instead of rehabilitating the drug abuser into regular social life, what a drug test actually succeeds in doing is really denying the student a proper education pushing him farther into dependence on drugs.

Another perspective to this whole issue is the opinion that it is not really the treatment after a positive drug test that deters the person from further drug abuse; it is rather the threat of incarceration and punishment. Once drug testing has identified a drug abuser, the treatment given to release him from addiction is opined to be superfluous by a lobby that argues that it is the possibility of punishment and loss of employment that actually motivates the people to actually stop abusing drugs. This perspective emphasizes that after drug testing, punishment or the threat of it is necessary and in a way constructive in cleaning up the society of drug abusers.

It is to be noted the usual urine drug testing does not differentiate between a regular drug abuser and a one-time experimenter. When the drug testing results come back as positive, it does not contain information on when the person used the drug, nor does it contain info on how often he uses it.

What results from this is that both of these types of drug users are clumped together and people who just experimented with a recreational drug just once in their life time are labeled as drug abusers too.