The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Canada's duly enshrined rights and privacy laws have evolved over the past 142 years on the strength of an untold number of intelligent and rational policymakers. I'm going to go out on a limb and say none of them ever envisioned their hard work being used to defend the "right" of high-school kids to come to class stoned or drunk. Yet here we are, with the Flin Flon School Board forced to back down from one of their most justified concepts in years: bringing in simple-to-use alcohol breathalyzers and saliva-based drug tests to confirm suspicions that a student is under the influence. Once all set to vote on (and likely approve) the measure, the board has referred the issue back to the committee level for further discussion after receiving a call of concern from the Manitoba Ombudsman's Office. It won't ever see the light of day now. If the almighty Ombudsman wasn't going to stop it, it would have been the Manitoba Association for Rights and Liberties (who knew there was such a thing?) or some other hypersensitive organization. Or a lawyer. Score one for privacy fanatics and zero for sensible policy that would have enhanced the learning environment of, to scrounge up a clich, the future leaders of our community and country. I suppose the school board has to take responsibility for not scrutinizing this idea more thoroughly before giving it serious public consideration. I guess they were like me and never foresaw such hay being made over it. Part of the problem is that some media outlets (not ours) initially described the proposed testing as "random," making it sound Orwellian when in fact it would only be applied in cases where there was already evidence of intoxication. The bigger problem is that our whole system assigns "rights" to people who don't deserve them. Of course teenagers (and all of us) deserve privacy, but does that really encompass the practice of attending a public institution after smoking a couple of joints or downing a screwdriver? Disciplined Students obviously don't have a free pass to do this as things now stand. Offenders are disciplined based on suspicion, but the methodology is hit and miss. You can often tell when someone is under the influence just by looking or smelling, but sometimes you can't, at least not reliably. That's why the deterrent value of valid testing is incalculable. Not to say there aren't legitimate concerns. Although students would have retained the ability to refuse a drug or alcohol test, some parents would be uncomfortable with their under-18 kids making that decision. That's a tricky proposition, but it could have been overcome with parental consent. Nine out of 10 parents, I'm sure, would very much like to know when their kids are breaking fairly serious academic ordinances. High-school staff have described the prevalence of high and drunk students not as major, but definitely there. That's exactly how I would sum up the problem when I attended junior high and high school in Flin Flon in the 1990s. Speaking from that experience, there were broad implications to having this go on. It was usually the same three or four guys in the back of the class, the ones with eye drops in their pockets. Let me say that I was far from a model student most of those years, but these guys were an uncomfortable distraction even for me. Worse, they made drug use appear mainstream, if not cool, to their impressionable peers. Sometimes I wondered if the teachers cared. Maybe they just didn't notice, or perhaps they knew they couldn't prove anything. For me, this whole testing debate comes down to one simple fact: there are expectations for youth attending our schools. Be on time, don't fight, don't show up stoned or drunk. These are pretty basic guidelines that prepare them for the society that awaits. Responsible drug and alcohol testing should be permitted in our high schools, both as a deterrent and as a way of singling out young people who may need help. A small number of people, however, will ensure this positive step is one never taken. Local Angle runs Fridays.
