Recently, a col­lege in Missouri made drug test­ing manda­tory for all stu­dents, accord­ing to an arti­cle pub­lished on Oct. 10 in the New York Times.

Linn State Technical College informed its stu­dents they would be required to sub­mit a urine test that would be checked for all ille­gal drugs as a require­ment of enrolling there. I do not think this is a bad idea.

Of course, some stu­dents felt this was an intru­sion on their per­sonal free­dom and pri­vacy – those who were on some form of ille­gal drug(s). The inten­tion of drug test­ing is not to invade pri­vacy, but to ensure the safety of others.

Many places require drug test­ing for their work­ers. It is not a bad idea to start this as peo­ple enter col­lege. College is sup­posed to pre­pare stu­dents for the work­force. Personally, I do not want some­one high out of their mind oper­at­ing heavy machin­ery or fill­ing my prescriptions.

If some­one is show­ing up to class with some mind-altering drug in their sys­tem, there is a chance they might show up to work in the same con­di­tion. Anyone who is using mar­i­juana, cocaine, opi­ates, PCP, or oxy­codone needs to be tested. If they hap­pen to have a prob­lem, they need to be sent to a drug reha­bil­i­ta­tion center.

The college’s lawyer, Kent Brown, told New York Times reporter Timothy Williams, “There was a feel­ing that the col­lege wasn’t prop­erly step­ping up to pre­pare the stu­dents for get­ting jobs in indus­tries where drug test­ing was becom­ing the norm and an unavoid­able bar­rier to get­ting and keep­ing good jobs in the industry.”

I wouldn’t mind it at all if Ferris started requir­ing incom­ing stu­dents to be drug tested. Students using ille­gal drugs are wast­ing their time, the pro­fes­sors’ time and the time of oth­ers. The use of ille­gal drugs for “stress relief” is one of the poor­est excuses I have ever heard.

Brown said some of the pro­grams Linn State offers deal with heavy equip­ment oper­a­tions, high-voltage elec­tric­ity or dan­ger­ous chem­i­cals; drug test­ing is nec­es­sary to ensure the safety of all students.

Ferris offers sim­i­lar pro­grams, and I’m cer­tain many of us don’t want some­one who is hal­lu­ci­nat­ing mix­ing chem­i­cals or run­ning heavy equip­ment. That’s quite a dan­ger­ous combination.

National Drug-Free Workplace Alliance indi­cated that drug use in the work­place has cost America bil­lions of dol­lars every year in lost pro­duc­tiv­ity and has increased health prob­lems and work­place accidents.

According to con​sumer​af​fairs​.com, the American Council for Drug Education reported more than 70 per­cent of sub­stance abusers hold a job. While this sta­tis­tic includes abuse of both legal and ille­gal drugs, Quest Diagnostics, a diag­nos­tic test­ing com­pany, reported the use of pre­scrip­tion opi­ates by American work­ers and job appli­cants has increased by 40 per­cent since 2005.

In addi­tion, results from more than 5.5 mil­lion urine drug tests revealed an 18 per­cent jump in opi­ate pos­i­tives in the gen­eral U.S. work­force in a sin­gle year (2008−09), and a more than 40 per­cent climb from 2005-09.

I won­der how many peo­ple who are cur­rently in col­lege will con­tribute to rais­ing that num­ber. Drug test­ing as a require­ment to attend col­lege is not a bad idea. It would help make the aca­d­e­mic and work envi­ron­ment much safer in the long run.

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