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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Why drug-testing of children won't work
Gillian Bowditch The Scotsman
Tuesday 24 Feb 2004 Opinion ONE evening several years ago, in the run-up to Christmas, my son decided it was high time I started my drugs education. "Herod is the worst drug," he informed me earnestly. "It kills babies." He was in primary one, and he had already absorbed more - albeit muddled - information about drugs in two terms than I had in my entire school career. When I was at school, speed = distance/time. This was at a state school in Paisley's Ferguslie Park, which at that time was labelled the worst sink estate in northern Europe. These days, even the poshest little primary-one, private-school princess is au fait with the concept of drugs. I don't have a problem with this if the lesson imparted is that drugs are illegal, potentially dangerous and to be avoided at all costs. But this is not the message the government is putting across. Two years ago, the Scottish Executive abandoned its hardline, anti-drugs strategy in favour of educating children to make "informed healthy choices about drugs". In place of the discredited Just Say No campaign came Know The Score, which aims to provide practical information about drugs. Increasingly, however, Know The Score looks like how to score; a quick fix. Now, courtesy of Tony Blair and the News of the World, we are to have a radical new drugs policy - the random testing of pupils for illegal substances, an idea imported from America, where it has been championed by right-wing religious fundamentalists. Next month, head teachers in England and Wales will be given details of the new scheme. In Scotland, Jack McConnell has adopted his favourite position and is once more perched firmly on the fence. It may yet be adopted in Scotland. The random drug-testing of children is evidence of New Labour's continuing addiction to easy headlines and simplistic solutions. This latest policy-by-tabloid was backed up by a poll purporting to show that the majority of parents are in favour of the scheme. Official confirmation that your child is clean is no doubt reassuring for parents. You can also see why a parent, worried sick about a child's behaviour and unwilling to take their repeated denials at face value, might even welcome definitive proof of a son or daughter's involvement in drugs. But once you have proof, what happens next? Do you hand them over to the police? Do you strip-search them every time they leave or enter the house? It is unlikely your children will meekly co-operate with any drugs programme you might frog-march them to, assuming you can find a programme willing to take them. The chances are that they will never trust you again. They could be expelled, a move which could jeopardise their future and leave you scrabbling to find somewhere for them to finish their education. As soon as you look beyond the most superficial of knee-jerk responses, it is difficult to see why parents would want to collude with a government policy whose effect would be to turn children into quasi-criminals and force them to prove their innocence. And the vast majority are innocent. According to the Scottish Executive, "reported use of drugs has changed little since 1998, with 23 per cent of 15-year-olds and 8 per cent of 13-year-olds having used drugs in the month prior to the survey". Very few pupils reported using anything other than cannabis. which, with a logic unique to Downing Street, the government has just downgraded from a class B to a class C drug. In some American schools, pupils must perform urine tests in front of an observer to prevent them cheating - the practice of getting friends to hide drug-free samples in cubicles is widespread. The mortification and humiliation for a young girl hitting puberty with all that that entails hardly bears thinking about. Nor is random drug-testing conducive to the government's aim of encouraging children to stay on at school. And just when did the classrooms of America become role models for Britain's schools? Assume for a moment that the random testing of pupils works, and the evidence from the US is that it does not - state-funded research by the University of Michigan showed no significant difference in rates of drug use between schools which had drug-testing programmes and those which didn't. Assume it costs nothing - and the US tests cost between $10 and $30 each. Assume it could be easily and practically implemented - and teachers have grave doubts. Assume it doesn't contradict other aspects of government policy on drugs - which it clearly does. Assume we have ample, successful drug programmes to help kids kick the habit - which we don't. Even assuming all that, what sort of society condones the random drug-testing of children? The answer is a society which does not value its freedoms; a society happy to collude with a government using the bluntest of political instruments to achieve its aims. We can, after all, prevent most forms of anti-social behaviour by putting great swathes of the population under constant surveillance or by randomly and unexpectedly invading the privacy of individuals. Most police states have very low levels of crime. Such policy does not, however, promote trust and individual responsibility - the two key ingredients for a peaceful, civilised existence. This is not simply an argument about civil liberties, or about dodgy, unproven policy, or about the disadvantages of turning teachers into warders or about the increasing encroachment by the state into the lives of its citizens. It is fundamentally an argument about how we view our children. Increasingly, the government seems to view them as Midwich cuckoos - a strange, maverick generation whose malign influence must be quashed at any cost. Children have a strong sense of justice and idealism. They have a natural respect for authority. Responsible parents and good teachers foster this. But how do you learn to respect an authority which is intent on stripping you of all dignity and responsibility? You only have to think of the film American Beauty, where the fanatical, disciplinarian father routinely tests his son for drugs, to see the degree of alienation, suspicion and dysfunction this kind of behaviour engenders, not to mention the numerous deceits invented by the son to undermine it. Once drug-testing becomes a rite of passage for a generation of children, why stop there? Why not breathalyse them on their way to school or run medical checks to establish their virginity? Trust is the vital component of any relationship, but it is not something that appears to be valued by New Labour. Tony Blair has recklessly squandered the huge reserves of trust vested in him. Now he plans to destroy the trust established between parent and child; school and pupil. Random testing for children does not represent a clever new policy to combat the scourge of drugs; it is the politics of failure.
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