SCHOOLS ENTITLED TO PROTECT THEIR INTEGRITY

The Privacy Commissioner believes drug testing violates pupils' rights
to privacy and in support quotes Section 16 of the UN convention,
which to be effective must involve an unlawful interference with the
pupil.

What is unlawful requires careful regard.

Inherent in the UN articles is the belief that if we are to accept the
advantages of an acceptable community then we owe that community a
duty to respect its standards.

When we fail to do so, then the community is entitled to take such
steps as are necessary to protect itself.

In such a case, its actions are not unlawful. The standards of a
community vary from decade to decade and what may have been acceptable
in a previous decade may not be so today.

The determination of mutual obligation can only be made on the facts
at the time.

Today schools are entitled to protect their integrity and, by
extension, that of the community.

It may be that in the next decade drug taking may be regarded as no
more serious than smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol. But that is
not the case today.

Patrick Hargraves, Sorrento (Qld).