DRUG TESTS CAN GO TOO FAR

I agree with Mr Harty (Letters, December 17) that anyone who drives knowing
that a substance whether legal or illicit - is affecting their driving
ability is highly irresponsible, and if caught should be prosecuted.

However, I also feel it's important that any road safety programme of drug
driving enforcement should be just that, and not a way of propping up the
Misuse of Drugs Act.

That said. There are numerous problems with testing, body fluids for drug
use or impairment through drug use.

The greatest shortcoming 0f these tests is their inability to determine drug
use or impairment at the time the test was taken.

Cannabis for example will test positive weeks after a single use, many over
the counter and prescription medicine test positive for opiates and
amphetamines. And chemical tests standing alone are not precise enough to
supply the formal proof needed for prosecutions;

I am not attacking the police. I acknowledge they have a difficult job to
do. But I do find it remarkable in today's political climate where every
statement made by politicians is scrutinised. That when it comes to drugs
there is little public reaction, no questioning of central government's
adoption of Joseph Goebbels' philosophy ("It is the absolute right of the
state to supervise the formation of public opinion.") and the Stasi-type
police state evolving as a result of the establishment tinkering with the
drug laws.

Hypothetically of course, would Mr Harty or anyone else support the
expansion of these tests to include: pre-employment and 'random drug
testing' at work for all professions or even measures similar to that used
in Sweden, where people - on the whim of police officers - are regularly
pulled off the street, out of clubs and bars, interrogated and forcibly
tested for illicit drug use. This practice was recent praised by the US drug
tsar Barry McCaffery, and we all Know how Tony Blair and his inner sanctum
like to take advice from the U.S. on drug issues.

The fact is, testing for recent illicit drug use is an unnecessarly
expensive operation and a creeping invasion into private life!

Don Barnard
Braintree, Essex