It will deter students from taking drugs

The argument

High school athletes should be drug tested, because subjecting them to either random or consistent drug testing will deter them from taking drugs. Deterrence works by attaching a real and reasonably likely cost to a decision, and testing supplies exactly that: it converts drug use from a private choice with distant consequences into one carrying an immediate risk of detection. Drug testing in schools has been proven to effectively achieve its main goal. It reduces the number of students who use and misuse illicit drugs, because they know they would have to face consequences, and it gives students a reason to resist peer pressure to take drugs. That second effect deserves emphasis. Adolescent drug use is very often a social decision rather than an individual one, and the hardest part of refusing is not the wanting but the explaining. A test that everyone knows about supplies a reason that is external, impersonal and impossible to argue with, which is precisely what a teenager under pressure lacks. A study published in 2012 found that students subject to mandatory random student drug testing reported less substance use than comparable students in high schools without such testing. The fear of getting caught with drugs in their system is enough of a deterrent to stop high school athletes from taking them in the first place, and athletes are unusually responsive to it. Students often value the sport they are playing and their position on the team enough to be diverted away from drug use — they have something concrete and immediate to lose, which is more than can be said for the general health warnings that form the rest of drug education. The consequence is also proportionate: it costs a place on a team, not a criminal record. Testing student-athletes who participate in school sports is therefore a reasonable and effective means of addressing a school's concerns in deterring and reducing drug use.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Drug testing high school athletes is not an effective way to reduce and deter students from drug use. A 2013 study looked at 14 years of data on student drug use and found that school drug testing was associated with "moderately lower marijuana use," but increased use of other, more dangerous illicit drugs. Another study reported by the National Institutes of Health concluded that drug testing was not associated with changes in substance use.. Moreover, another study found that random drug and alcohol testing had "no deterrent effects on student athletes for past-month use during any of four follow-up periods". Evidence shows that students and high school athletes are not largely deterred from drug testing programs implemented by their schools. These students who are determined to use drugs will either continue to do so, unafraid of the consequences, or will seek out far more dangerous substances with potentially more harmful and even lethal effects.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] The evidence runs the other way on the counter's account: a 2013 study covering fourteen years of data found school drug testing associated with moderately lower marijuana use but increased use of other, more dangerous illicit drugs; research reported by the National Institutes of Health found no association between testing and changes in substance use; and a further study found random drug and alcohol testing had no deterrent effect on student athletes' past-month use across four follow-up periods. [Rejecting P3] Nor does what athletes stand to lose produce the diversion the premise expects — the counter argues that students set on using will either continue undeterred by the consequences or move to substances that are harder to detect and more dangerous, which makes the policy counterproductive rather than merely ineffective.