Is drug testing an emerging substance use prevention strategy in middle schools?
In an effort to prevent substance use among school-aged youths, middle schools have adopted a variety of strategies ranging from classroom curricula to peer helper programs. A more recent addition to the arsenal of prevention strategies is drug testing. Although drug testing to date has largely targeted high school students, it is also in use in middle schools. This presentation will discuss results from the NIDA-funded national study of School-based Substance Use Prevention Programs (SSUPPS). As part of this study, a representative sample of teachers (N=1939; response rate=72.4%) responsible for substance use prevention in their middle schools were asked whether their schools conduct drug testing and, if so, which students are subject to such testing and how the testing is conducted. Preliminary SSUPPS results indicate that about 7% of the nations middle schools are testing students for drug use. In addition, drug testing at this level tends to occur on an unannounced, random basis an
