Question:
Now that I have two young boys, I am starting to worry about them
using drugs. I know a lot of you reading this are drug users. Your
garbled posts give it away, or perhaps it is just poor education. In
any case, I am not really interested in accepting the view that
children will do drugs, and it's just part of growing up. Drugs make
you a different person, and it is generally a person with less
intelligence and drive than the person who started using.
In any case, I have a modest proposal to reduce drug use among public
school children, and it is universal drug testing. Not really sure
why this isn't done. Public school children has few constitutional
protections against things like this, so I doubt it is for that
reason. Perhaps it is budgetary, but I'd prefer no sports teams with
a drug-free student body to what we have today.
You say drug tests can be fooled. Perhaps, but how about this idea
that I have not seen elsewhere. The day before a urine test, the
subject has to drink a liquid containing one of a variety of tagging
agents that will be excreted in the urine over the next 48 hours.
Then they are given a bar code that is to be placed on their container
the next day. If the tagging agent in their urine doesn't match what
is encoded on the bar code, then we would know there was a switching
of urine. Hair tests can also be done, and it's hard to see how those
can be fooled.
An initial screening of a decent sample of the students could be done
to show there is a problem. No names would be released, but the data
would shock a lot of parents. It's interesting that this generation
of parents is nearly as blind as the previous on this issue.
Students determined to intoxicate themselves can always find a way
around this, or perhaps they just drop out. But I don't excuse our
current lack of seriousness on this issue. Why not at least try to
reduce the rate of teenage drug use?
Answer:
used drugs as a teenager, which was during the early 1980's but have not
used them since. I live in a rather large metro area and would have to say
that I see very little drug use among teens in my area, especially compared
to my highschool days where I would estimate 80%+ at least recreationally
used marijuanna. I do not think the general public would subject their
children to mandatory testing as you describe and I am certain they wouldn't
be willing to fund any such program. My advice would be to communicate
openly and frequently with your children, assuring them that nothing they
ever do could be too bad to be forgiven and monitoring their behavoir for
any warning signs. I belive they also have home testing kits for parents if
you feel reasonably confidant that a problem exists but would warn you
against violating the trust of a teenager unless absolutely necessary. Im
not too familiar with the more modern drugs but can usually detect a
marijuana smoker within a couple minutes of conversation so I assume the
harsher drugs would be even more obvious.
