ELEMENT OF SURPRISE IN RANDOM DRUG TESTS LOST IN THE ASKING

In the matter of random drug testing by schools, Privacy Commissioner Chris
Puplick has intervened to protect the rights of the child. His invocation
of the UN convention raises the question of whether this right is an
absolute one and the extent to which it applies if the law has been broken.

Has he considered the rights and duties of parents (and the child's school
when acting in loco parentis) with respect to the protection of their
children from harmful external influences?

By upholding the child's individual rights, he erects barriers against
early intervention and remedial action to save these young people from
drug-induced physical and psychological harm. Has the community a moral
duty to protect an individual from such self-induced damage?

The commissioner's proposed solution to this conflict of rights with duties
is for the young person to give permission for the test. At this point the
test is no longer random nor is it private.

Furthermore, it places the young person in a position of having to choose
between giving assent to a course of action that can lead to incrimination
if drugs have been used, and the alternative of not assenting and thereby
generating suspicion for which there is no mechanism to establish innocence
if drugs have not been used.

Grant Maple, Newport