Make kids respect the law by disrespecting their rights

Government rejects drug testing
The Government has ruled out adopting an expensive plan for drug testing in schools and workplaces. The rejection of the proposal, which would have cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars and was based on models used in the United States, follows an admission this month by Justice Minister Annette King that police are losing the fight against pure methamphetamine, or P. A former detective who runs the drugs education service MethCon put the case yesterday for a "zero-tolerance" approach to drugs. The Australian National Council on Drugs, that country's principal advisory body on drug policy, spent a year looking at evidence from around the world on drug testing in schools. In a report issued in March, it concluded there was insufficient evidence of any proven benefits. That report found saliva and urine tests were notoriously unreliable and caused considerable hostility and mistrust. There was also the risk of increased truancy and students switching to less detectable substances. The Australian report estimated the cost at $NZ432 million to conduct a single saliva test a year for each Australian student. Urine tests were slightly cheaper, at $371m. Random testing of just 10 per cent of the school population three times a year would cost more than $100m, while weekly random testing in all schools would cost taxpayers billions.

Look, I don’t have much confidence in coming down like a ton of bricks on people over things like drugs, if you are truly an addict and are sick, then how the hell does putting you into a prison help solve your sickness? Now sure go after the organized crime that sells the stuff and profits from it, but you need clever tools to do that – LIKE the SFO in it’s old format with the powers to compel evidence, go after organized crime with forensic accountants which would be much more effective at pruning organized crimes ability to build profits and as for P itself, real simple – ban all pseudoephedrine products coming into the country, the drying up of the main ingredient would shut the entire industry down – but of course the legal pushers of that drug who make Billions would NEVER allow a government to ban their drug so we are left coming up with bullshit solutions like mass random testing of school kids – wars on drugs don’t work because to make people respect the law you destroy their rights, it’s like trying to force democracy at the end of an M16 barrel – the means are incompatible with the ends.