America’s drug tsar raised the stakes on drug testing in schools yesterday, suggesting that it could come to be seen as normal required and “responsible behaviour” in the same way that some US schools routinely test all pupils for tuberculosis before admission.
“Some schools in the United States say a child needs to have a TB test,” he said. “It’s not considered to be an invasion of privacy. It’s responsible behaviour. I believe we’re very close to be able to think about that in terms of substance abuse.”
The government’s acting increasingly insane. Isn’t it about time we fired it?
One more pervasive step towards the government controlling the lives of its citizens – instead of governing them.
I don’t think this is a credible threat. If government statistics were published showing the percent of high school students who at least experiment with drugs the US would become the laughingstock of the international community. It would either need to be covered up or discontinued. I don’t think the politicians really want to know how many people use drugs. The war on drugs is often comparable to the war on terror. Both were pretty much lost before they began and are mostly political propaganda.
Of course it is an invasion… But to me, that isn’t the point.
What is the point? I’m not a lawyer, but isn’t it something called prior restraint? And isn’t that wrong?
I bet you guys one BJ that this Czar drinks, smokes pot and snorts coke when no one is watching.
And do what with the results? Arrest them and send them to prison? Expel them from school? Call their parents?
Golly, wouldn’t that just solve all our problems: Keep drug users from ever completing an education. Let them remain on the public dole forever!
I have to say something, about the past, and little towns..
WE ALWAYS had someplace to go, some place to play, some place to be BUZZY.
MOSt kids just need someplace CHEAP, to Play, or go…
If you dont have SOMEPLACE for kids to find and enjoy, they will FIND THEIR OWN way to something, you MAY not like.
AGREED, this IS an invasion.
But WHAT happened to the Rec. Halls, the the CHEAP theaters, and the Video game places, the Dances….
This goes for Adults ALSO… We drink, take drugs, to make TIME PASS and to relax..
You know, I also note that the article talks about “random” drug testing in relation to TB testing. But we don’t do “random” TB tests. Further, TB is a communicable disease.
I would not allow any school to drug test my child under any circumstances and I would be willing to fight it in court. This is just one more example of our liberty eroding away.
Neo cons always like to lash out at us “liberals” when we say America isn’t so free a country and that we need to return to the values of freedom. The same values that Bush only pays lip service to. They say, “we live in the free-est country on earth and bla bla bla.” Maybe we do, but I rather doubt that. Holland springs to mind.
But even if the US is more free today than other nations, it is not more free than the US of only 25 years ago.
WHAT no more smokin rock in the boys locker room!?!?!?!!!?? fucking ripoff
Sure, as soon as congress passes legislation requiring mandatory drug tests on members of congress before participating in their work. Isn’t it important for their minds to be clear?
According to the Bible, it’s perfectly fine for human governments to require moral behavior (Romans 13). Intoxicating oneself for pleasure is a sin that hurts the abuser and society also.
#11 — you’re right, I was thinking just the same thing.
Here’s where to start:
Test ALL FEDERAL and STATE employees tomorrow. Our tax dollars are pissed away enough on minutiae, let’s play the game. No warning, all surprise: TEST THEM ALL TOMORROW. If they have the day off, call them, and order them to report to a hospital or testing center. If they pass, whoopy.
Those that fail, here’s the punishment: 30 DAYS IN FEDERAL PRISON. No ifs, ands, or buts – 30 DAYS. PERIOD. They’re also fired, their records are marked up, they have a helluva time even getting jobs mopping floors. Nobody in their families trust them anymore, the lying sacks of schtuph.
As OUR employees, they KNOW these laws. If they’re working for US citizens, and they are also working within the government, then disobeying the laws borders on treason and insurrection. They are part of the problem, and must be STAMPED OUT!!!
Alternately, stop selling the top three gateway drugs: coffee, tobacco, and alcohol. That’s a pretty ludicrous idea, too — but what the hell, it would be as easy to do as winning the ‘war on drugs’.
Alternately, drop the B.S. We have bigger problems to worry about than kids smoking grass, like the national debt, executive/entertainer pay being too high, Zionism, low paid teachers, Korea, Ira*, etc….
Oh, and all the other drugs? Most of them are not only FAR more dangerous than pot, they’re water-soluable, and out of the system in 3-5 days at most.
Yah, facts is facts, kids! 🙂
If this had been instituted at my high school, there wouldn’t have been enough people there to have classes.
This proposal is insane. If you get caught with drugs, you get punished. Plain and simple. If drugs keep you from being productive at school or at work, you face the consequences for it: failing at school or being fired from work. Isn’t that punishment enough? What if drugs don’t make you any less productive? Should you still fail due to being suspended or expelled because you committed a victimless crime? I think a proposal like that would do much more harm than good.
Schools should be there to educate for the real life to come… Hence, anything corporations are allowed to impose on their workers should be legal for schools to impose on the pupils. All places where I have worked and all places where my wife have worked have had drug testing policies, including one to get a job. Very well paid jobs… Schools should prepare for that.
With reasonable consequences this can have good results. What would I impose? One mandatory year of detox and drug treatment that would include normal schooling, but away from the rest of the population. Two functions: really affected would get treatment; peer-pressure victims would have greater counter-pressure not to ever try drug use.
Who should pay for it? Govt. as these would be the best monies spent in the war on drugs. However, if parents have resources, I’d charge them as well, up to their capacity, thus getting the third advantage: parents with imposed interest to stop their kids using drugs. Parents without reources? Free treatment for the kid but a year of community service for the parental education…
#12.
According to me, the Bible is a bunch of BS written 2,000 years ago and has ZERO bearing on anything today.
Stop reading that crap…read a nice novel or something. Relax.
It’s an invasion of privacy to test every kid for drugs and also hypocritical. Why stop at kids though? Why not just demand drug testing for EVERYONE in the country? Why single out kids in school?
Also, why not demand the wearing of helmets everywhere? Not only for motorcycles but for cars too. How many people die from head trauma each year in a car accident? Hey, how many people die from head trauma just from slipping in the bath tub, or ice on a sidewalk? How about making it mandatory to wear a helmet 24/7? Just think, that diet guru Dr. Atkins would be alive today if he were wearing his helmet.
I mean, why not. The government wants to control everything else, let’s have mandatory drug testing for every US citizen and make them all wear helmets and also make them all take physicals to see if they’re eating right. Let’s put cameras in every house, every room to monitor that they’re acting the way they should and not breaking any laws.
And on and on…..
“According to the Bible, it’s perfectly fine for human governments to require moral behavior (Romans 13). Intoxicating oneself for pleasure is a sin that hurts the abuser and society also.”
But Sir, you fail to call into account the fact that not all people living in America (or any nation) fall under the same belief structure. Just because you in your own mind have an idea of what is right, moral and just based on the teachings of Christ and his followers, does not mean that those ideas are carried by everyone else in the country, nor does it give you or anyone else the right to impose those ideas on anyone else. If you’re not fully willing to live by someone else’s rules and regulations, then there’s no reason why anyone else should be either. It is these very ideals that stitch together the fabric of democracy. Most neo-conservative Christians seem to have forgotten what this word means, so I would suggest you take some time and look it up on Wikipedia.
#16 how true. Anyone who has had to get a job in the last ten years has had a drug test. I have never understood how they need a warrant to come in your house but not your body. If it is legal for them to do on adults; and it is, it is legal for them to do on kids.
#19. I don’t need a warrant to drug test you at your job because I don’t have to hire you. We make an agreement I hire you, you work, I pay you, you use drugs while you work for me I fire you.
You are perfectly able to opt out of the agreement.
Schools are different. I have to send my child to school so there is no agreement. Now if the child is in sports which aren’t required by law then that is a different subject all together.
We need a drug test to figure out which kids aren’t on mood altering drugs. Go figure.
or we could just have a better system of indoctrinating our children with ideals for good behavior and veneration of the party
(ok, the veneration was a joke)
#22
You may be joking… But “the party” isn’t 🙂
Legalize all drugs, tax them… teach awareness, self responsible behavior and reasonable consequences for actions… if we don’t think the use of such things is wrong, we have far less of a desire to use them in our dissent or rebellion… again, i just wish this world would evolve a bit, this issue should have been old and dead a long time ago! the government isn’t oppressing us, we are oppressing ourselves…
#24
Do you really think people use drugs for “dissent or rebellion”?
absolutely, when they are young… all humans love doing things they are told not to… but if there was no wrong about doing it then almost no disfunction about it’s uses would occur… except in normal cases of excess, which would be severely minimised…
26,
You are a fool…
Most people use it to experiment, and find what they like, to make TIME pass, or to relax….
some even use them to speed up and get ahead..
I am 100% in favor of drug testing in schools.
For the TEACHERS!
#9 “Neo cons always like to lash out at us “liberals” when we say America isn’t so free a country and that we need to return to the values of freedom.”
Okay. You want the gov’t entering my business and
telling me who I can hire, fire, have to promote, etc. Slippery slope. You either want the gov’t to control our lives (and livelihood)or you don’t. Which is it?