The district is individual of three in the state that admitted a federal grant to test students on varsity sports teams for use of alcohol, marijuana, cocaine and heroin.

Officials say testing will help students stay drug free by giving them a cast-iron reason to say ‘no’ at what time friends are pressuring them to drink or use.

As many as 50 percent of Manatee’s high teach athletes and cheerleaders, about 1,000 students, have a mind take urine tests during the upcoming school year. The tests will also include an alcohol breath test.

Students who test positive ultimate will and testament not face expulsion or suspensions, but will have existence barred from competing in drill sports for time periods that lengthen with each positive test.

They will in addition be required to undergo counseling or drug treatment if they want to play once more. Sarasota and Charlotte schools do not have drug testing programs in place.

Some experts warn that the testing targets students who are unlikely to abuse substances, and they say the riches would be better spent on drug education.

But Manatee officials applied for the $103,000 federal grant because they believe drug use by county students is above the state average, before-mentioned Skip Wilhoit, a preacher with Manatee’s Safe and Drug-Free Schools program. Forty-eight other grants were awarded nationally.

In a 2006 state survey, almost 35 percent of Manatee students said they had used alcohol in the farther than month, and about 13 percent admitted to smoking marijuana.

“It’s designed to catch the students who have problems with this,” Wilhoit said. “If you go in opposition and exercise when you’re subject to random testing, you obviously be under the necessity a puzzle.”

Some school officials also argue that the testing will make sports safer for athletes, and even for cheerleaders whose amusement includes being thrown into the air.

But in that place is diversity about how effective testing programs are.

A nationwide study of 76,000 students in 2001 place that that testing did not reduce the number of middle and high schoolers using illegal drugs.

Critics argue that testing increases distrust between students and their schools, and that it does not target students most in need of help.

Money for testing would be better wearied on drug education or on counseling for students with drug problems, said Marsha Rosenbaum, a medical sociologist with the Drug Policy Alliance, a New York nonprofit group that advocates towards access to drug treatment.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that testing causes some students to drop out of school sports, Rosenbaum said.

“If you’ve got a small tub who wants to play baseball but doesn’t want to be drug tested, don’t you want to keep them in baseball?” she asked.

The debate transversely testing student-athletes has come up in several states. Matthews County schools in Virginia investigated drug testing a few years back after losing six members of its baseball team for tippling. Administrators and parents there clear it was the responsibility of the parents to stop their children from using drugs.

“Schools can’t do everything for parents; we finally came to that conclusion,” said former Superintendent Harry Ward.

Around 600 Florida high school students competing in football, baseball, softball and weightlifting were pure for steroid use during the the last school year in a state-funded program.

Only one student, a football player, produced a positive test. Legislators did not renew funding for the program during this year’s legislative session. The Manatee program does not test for steroid use.

In 2004, Sarasota Military Academy launched a recreational drug-testing program for all students, officers of instruction and staff. Principal Dan Kennedy said the program produced about three positive tests per year.

“I think it should be bestowed at every school and for everything the scholar population,” Kennedy declared. “I’ve had students come to me with tears in their eyes saying it’s given them the power to decide no.”

Under Manatee’s new program, athletes and cheerleaders who refuse to sign a testing consent form would not be allowed to take allotment in sports.

Students chosen to subsist tested will be called to the school clinic, asked to be discharged their pockets and then supply a animal-water sample and perform person alcohol breath proof. The testing is done in the clinic. Positive test results will be shared with the student, their parents, the made of iron director, the principal and coaches, but not principle enforcement.

Some parents and students in Manatee said they support the program.

“Other kids probably won’t like it; they’ll think it’s ridiculous, but if it stops the athletes from doing the unfit thing, then it’s the right thing,” reported Michael Ohlman, a catcher for Lakewood Ranch High’s baseball team.

Stacey Horton, coach of Braden River High’s cheerleading squad, said testing would help teachers spot students abusing usage drugs, among the trendier drugs.

“It’sitting not marijuana — they’re taking pills,” Horton said. “It’s hidden; you can’t smell it, you can’t detect these medications.”

From 1995 to 2001, Manatee High School tested its athletes as being recreational drugs, paying for testing kits with money from gate receipts and school booster funds. The program was in place at that teach because football coach Joe Kinnan felt strongly that it was a advance to keep students clean and allow them to serve as role models for others.

“The feedback I got from other students was, ‘Coach, this is formation a difference,’” Kinnan said.

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