Chimera

Urine tests are very ineffective and its sad to see some of these school districts waste hundreds of thousands of education dollars on these programs. Most of the drugs teens commonly use on any given weekend will not show up on a test by Monday morning. Most schools (especially those with a large student body) can only afford to do the NIDA-5 urine tests that only detect marijuana, cocaine, amphetamines, heroin, and PCP. Marijuana has the longest window of detection. Testing additional drugs (like many commonly abused prescription drugs) greatly increases the cost of the test if there is a test for those drugs. Of course, alcohol (the widely abused drug) is rarely ever detected by these tests.

In spring of 2006, the Grapevine-Colleyville high schools conducted their drug testing program for 462 students screened with the following results:

8 students positive for marijuana

1 student positive for cocaine

5 students refused to be tested

0 students positive for steroids

SOURCE: Grapevine-Colleyville school district

However, according to the Texas School Survey on Drug and Alcohol Use for Grapevine-Colleyville ISD, nearly 40% of high school seniors said they used marijuana during the 2006 school year.