As a student member of an athletic league, you want your team to perform at optimum levels. You depend on them for backup and support during your sports event and you have the right to know that your team mates are clean and sober (so to speak).
If your team mate was out last night, drinking or drugging, he or she is certainly not at optimum performance and their lack of respect for their bodies will impede your goals - good clean fun - and winning! We all know, it is not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game. Well, you may be working hard every day to insure your performance is up to par but if your team mates are not doing the same - you suffer.
If the schools do not want to pay for random drug and alcohol screening for students participating in extracurricular activities then parents should accept Sports Team dues which allows the coach to randomly test a player. A coach should have an idea if his players are participating in drinking and/or drugging by their behavior or performance. Alternatively, team members should have the ability to anonymously inform the coach to initiate a drug/alcohol screen. In the long run place the individual participating in alcohol abuse or drug abuse can be put on the road to sobriety. The goal is to remove athletes from a team in order to preserve the safety of other individuals on their team, in order to penalize for behavior not accepted in society and in order to allow for the integrity of the sport and its players.
Athletes around the world are honored for their hard work and good, clean living. Using drugs to enhance performance is just not honest and does not create an even playing field. Abusing alcohol and/or drugs is a sign of other problems that if taken care of early on - allows the true athlete to free himself/herself from addictions that may hinder their true performance.
In many states, it has been reported that the number of schools are using breath analyzers and other drug such tests to detect the use of alcohol and illegal substance during proms and other school events is increasing. Companies that sell these products are having a field day offering a wide selection to school officials. Schools that have no intention of owning these gadgets can count on the police to lend them these devices.
These are great devices, especially when used wisely and randomly. School officials can prevent accidents and mishaps by testing suspicious students for intoxication. However, we could not help but think -- aside from these instruments, what is being done to actually prevent alcohol from being consumed before, during or after these school activities?
It may be to everyone's great advantage if equal focus is given towards educational programs that will help lower a teenager's urge to consume alcohol or give in to the temptation to drink. These programs may be created by the school in collaboration with parents and non-profit organizations to resolve this issue on alcohol abuse. All the breath analyzers and Intoximeters in America will not prevent teenagers from drinking.
After all, we know for a fact that underage drinking is not confined to school events. How many teenagers have gotten drunk on school premises even when there was no school dance? There would be no breath analyzers or school officials there to admonish them or stop them from getting into a car. Dances happen twice, three times, four times a year, and the rest of the time, we have teenagers holding secret drinking sessions in their bedrooms during a sleepover while their parents are asleep.
Maybe the question is not about if we are doing enough random alcohol and drug testing identify offenders. It should be focused on what we need to do to keep them from drinking in the first place.
