Copyright: 2004 Southam Inc.
Contact: letters@nationalpost.com
Website: http://www.nationalpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/286
Author: Theodore Dalrymple
Note: Theodore Dalrymple is a British physician and contributing editor to
City Journal.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/testing.htm (Drug Testing)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth)

DRUG TESTING FOR THE LITTLE DARLINGS?

LONDON - The British government wants to introduce compulsory drug testing
for schoolchildren. This is because ever-larger proportions of them take
drugs at ever-earlier ages. Needless to say, the civil liberties
organizations are up in arms about it: It is every 10-year-old's
inalienable right to expand his consciousness with the aid of dope,
ecstasy, heroin or crack.

There are other possible objections to the proposal, however.

The first is that the government has no idea what to do when the little
darlings test positive. It says it will not be punitive towards them, but
will offer them treatment instead.

This supposes, of course, that there is something to treat, and moreover
that such a treatment exists, the truth of either of which suppositions is
highly doubtful.

One might as well try to treat the sea for its tendency to be wet.

Moreover, as with most government proposals, there is the distinct
possibility that it will have precisely the opposite effect to that which
is allegedly intended. (Of course, whenever such a paradoxical result
happens, there is a call for the governmental program that produced it to
be expanded: If at first you don't succeed, spend, spend some more.)

In addition to the natural rebelliousness of youth, such as most of us went
through, we now live in a thoroughly antinomian social atmosphere and
culture, in which freedom and independence of spirit are thought to consist
largely of setting one's face against received wisdom and standards.

You can't praise a work of art more highly than by calling it
transgressive, or by suggesting that it breaks the last taboo. (Last taboos
are like great prima donnas making positively their final appearances, that
is to say they keep coming back.) In such a culture, bad is good, and vice
is virtue.

It would not be surprising, therefore, if children -- at least among quite
a large proportion of the population -- actually wanted to test positive to
drugs, to as many dangerous drugs as possible in fact. No one will gain any
kudos, or street credibility, by testing negative time after time. That
would be sissy, and macho is better.

And since there will be no sanction in any case for having tested positive,
the advantage will be all for having done so.

What of the parents, though?

Ah yes, the parents.

Among my patients are quite a number of teachers, and they all tell me the
same thing: If they report to parents nowadays that their offspring are
misbehaving, indeed are making themselves thoroughly obnoxious, the parents
will almost invariably side with their offspring.

How dare the teacher say such a thing?

Most parents are now so thoroughly egotistical and self-important that they
cannot conceive that the fruit of their loins should be other than perfect.
Immaculate conception is now the norm. Any criticism of their offspring is
thus an implicit reflection upon or criticism of them, which is intolerable
as well as unjustified.

So if their offspring test positive, many parents will blame not
themselves, but the school, or the authorities, or indeed anyone but
themselves. They will be angry that the school has not merely failed to
prevent their darlings from taking drugs, but has actively corrupted them.
They will march down to the school and demand an explanation from the
teachers, whom they will be prepared to assault.

It must, after all, be their fault that little Johnny smokes dope, or
snorts cocaine, or whatever, because they -- the parents -- have given him
everything, for example a television in his own bedroom. Those who think I
am exaggerating should listen to parents telling me that the habitual
petulance of their child is a complete mystery to them because they have
always bought him the latest energy-returning, electrically illuminated
Nikes, as soon as he wanted them.

In view of the natural perversity of man, and especially of youth, I have
often wondered whether the solution to the drug problem would be not to
forbid the taking of drugs during childhood, but to make it compulsory.
Imagine the squeals of disgust if children were actually obliged by their
teachers in school to inhale alien substances through their nostrils, or
better still, to inject them into their veins.

Severe punishments would be meted out to those who failed to comply with
teachers' instructions. I suspect that in no time at all the resisters
would be the heroes of the hour, while those who complied would be put off
drugs for life. "Now, children, take out your needles and syringes ..." In
no time at all there would be a profound revulsion against drugs, and they
would be entirely demystified.

Since my modest proposal is unlikely ever to be implemented, however, some
other means of dealing with the problem will have to be found.

Testing children's urine, and then lamenting ineffectually over the result,
is not such a means.

It conduces to no end except increased government interference in our daily
lives.