War on drugs spreads to Britain
Sunday, February 22nd, 2004 10:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robinturnerThere are certain words that, when used in slogans, ring alarm bells for me. One is "new", as in "New Left", "New World Order", "New Labour", "New Age" and so forth. It usually means "old but tarted up". Another is "war". Unless you're actually planning on killing people, putting "war" in your slogan normally means that you are desperate and on the point of defeat. We have had wars on poverty, wars on crime, and of course the war on drugs. I forget who said "the war on drugs is over, and the drugs won."
Tony Blair hasn't, up to my knowledge, used the phrase "war on drugs" yet; apart from anything else, the British electorate tend not to be taken in by that kind of rhetoric. However, it looks like he is taking the road oft travelled and "getting tough on drugs" (he's also dodging and weaving on immigration, which is another sign of a politician who checks the opinion polls as often as a nervous investor checks the stock market). The government recently gave a nod in the direction of reality by re-classifying cannabis as a class C drug, meaning that it's still not the kind of thing a good upright Englishman should be indulging in, but it's not likely to tear apart the fabric of society. Consequently, the government needs to show that it's not "soft on drugs", which could lead to them being soft on crime, terrorism or child-molesting bishops.
The solution is random drug testing in schools. When I was at school, staring vacantly out of the window just resulted in a cuff to the ear; now it could mean a trip to the school nurse. Am I alone in finding this outrageous? (Actually that was a rhetorical question - the Liberal Democrats are up in arms.) I can accept that drug tests have their uses. Until we have the Druggie Olympics, it's probably a good idea to test athletes for banned substances, and there are good reasons for making sure that airline pilots don't have lines of coke arranged on the instrument panel. However, these are both situations which people enter into voluntarily; you know when you sign up that drugs are not part of the deal, and that you may be tested for them, just as my students know that plagiarising from the Internet is not allowed, and it is not a violation of their privacy for me to type sentences from their essays into Google. In contrast, secondary education is not the 100 metres hurdles, or even a university course; it is an event you have to enter whether you like it or not.
Parents and society as a whole over-ride children's freedom for their own benefit. We play God because we have to; no parent would uphold their toddler's right to stick knitting needles into electrical sockets. However, this does not mean that we have an unlimited right to violate their privacy. British society still regards cannabis use as unacceptable. Turkish society still regards premarital sex as unacceptable. Parents have the right to force their daughters to take a medical examination to ensure that they are still virgins, and school principals, being in loco parentis, have the same right. It isn't used often, but when it is used, the result is often suicide.
Teenagers are pretty much like the rest of us, but with less experience and more hormones. If I were asked to take a random drug test, I would say "Sod off" and call a lawyer. A fifteen-year-old might well take the test, and slit their wrists waiting for the results.
Tony Blair hasn't, up to my knowledge, used the phrase "war on drugs" yet; apart from anything else, the British electorate tend not to be taken in by that kind of rhetoric. However, it looks like he is taking the road oft travelled and "getting tough on drugs" (he's also dodging and weaving on immigration, which is another sign of a politician who checks the opinion polls as often as a nervous investor checks the stock market). The government recently gave a nod in the direction of reality by re-classifying cannabis as a class C drug, meaning that it's still not the kind of thing a good upright Englishman should be indulging in, but it's not likely to tear apart the fabric of society. Consequently, the government needs to show that it's not "soft on drugs", which could lead to them being soft on crime, terrorism or child-molesting bishops.
The solution is random drug testing in schools. When I was at school, staring vacantly out of the window just resulted in a cuff to the ear; now it could mean a trip to the school nurse. Am I alone in finding this outrageous? (Actually that was a rhetorical question - the Liberal Democrats are up in arms.) I can accept that drug tests have their uses. Until we have the Druggie Olympics, it's probably a good idea to test athletes for banned substances, and there are good reasons for making sure that airline pilots don't have lines of coke arranged on the instrument panel. However, these are both situations which people enter into voluntarily; you know when you sign up that drugs are not part of the deal, and that you may be tested for them, just as my students know that plagiarising from the Internet is not allowed, and it is not a violation of their privacy for me to type sentences from their essays into Google. In contrast, secondary education is not the 100 metres hurdles, or even a university course; it is an event you have to enter whether you like it or not.
Parents and society as a whole over-ride children's freedom for their own benefit. We play God because we have to; no parent would uphold their toddler's right to stick knitting needles into electrical sockets. However, this does not mean that we have an unlimited right to violate their privacy. British society still regards cannabis use as unacceptable. Turkish society still regards premarital sex as unacceptable. Parents have the right to force their daughters to take a medical examination to ensure that they are still virgins, and school principals, being in loco parentis, have the same right. It isn't used often, but when it is used, the result is often suicide.
Teenagers are pretty much like the rest of us, but with less experience and more hormones. If I were asked to take a random drug test, I would say "Sod off" and call a lawyer. A fifteen-year-old might well take the test, and slit their wrists waiting for the results.
