PLOT TO DESTROY

The Editor, Madam:

Your story in The Gleaner dated November 17, 1998 about the way customs
will search for ingested drugs drew my immediate attention. It caused me to
wonder if the people charged with leadership in the nation's Customs
services are in need of head examinations.

I concluded that it is part of a plot to destroy the tourist industry. This
plot was conceived because the harasssment of tourists by street vendors,
hustlers, dope pushers and an assortment of others, along with the
outrageously high cost of rental cars and hotel rooms and the sameness of
tourism product offerings were not doing enough to "kill" the tourist
industry.

The hatching of this Customs plan was absolutely necessary to ensure that
the industry be brought to its knees. Ivy O'Gilvie, a senior customs
officer, says that the machine to be used to identify persons who might
have ingested narcotics is 90 per cent correct (accurate). Ms. O'Gilvie
further stated that the trained Customs officers will be looking for
"suspicious looking" people and have them do random drug test.

The question for Ms. O'Gilvie is who will compensate those 10 per cent
mistakenly identified as having ingested narcotics and are hauled off to
the hospital for the removal of drugs that do not exist? Who will
compensate them for missed connections and lost jobs because of lateness?
Who will compensate those people who are inconvienenced because the machine
is only wrong 10 per cent of the time?

Those proposing this unworkable proposal should ask how comfortable they
would be with an airline system that only works 90 per cent of the time.

Drug use, ingestion, and trafficking is a scourge that must be eliminated.
Not only must it be eliminated, it is a "black eye" for our country. But
this problem and its solutions must be approached with care. We need
strategies that will work and not create dislocations and havoc in other
critical areas such as tourism. Along with addressing the drug menace, if
the desire of the Jamaican authorities is the maintenance of their fragile
tourist industry, my plea is this. Do not to do something as silly as
identify "suspicious looking" people for "random drug testing" on machine
that "is 90 per cent correct."

I am, etc.,

Sylvester Bowie
E-mail: bowies@hhsserver.hhs.csus.edu
6000 J Street
Division of Social Work, CSU, Sacramento, California

Checked-by: Richard Lake