School drug testing varies quite a bit from the testing methods used for employment. In school drug testing programs, privacy is paramount. In addition to their privacy, students who have tested positive are also provided with assistance to help them remove drug use from their lives. Generally this form of testing is intended to help those students who may already be using drugs but are not as obvious about their use. The testing and support can help them stop that abuse before it becomes a serious problem that persists into their adult lives.
Marijuana is still a commonly used drug among teens and is often overlooked as a harmless drug. For these reasons, drug testing and evaluation of teens who use marijuana is an important step in educating these teens about the harmful effects of the drug and its use. Among these adverse issues are lowered academic achievement, higher rate of drop out, increased risk of criminal activity as an adult and a prevalence of psychiatric disorders.
Marijuana drug testing is done randomly among students who are signed up for the program (generally this is students involved in athletic and other extracurricular activities in line with the 2002 Supreme Court Ruling) and means using urine, sweat or saliva tests to determine the results. Many schools still rely on urine samples for drug test results due to their accuracy but others have moved on to using sweat and saliva testing because they remove the need for invasive monitoring of the drug tests and reduce the risk of the student tampering with the sample to avoid a positive result.