US DRUG CHIEF PROMOTES RANDOM TESTING IN SCHOOLS

America's drug tsar raised the stakes on drug testing in schools
yesterday, suggesting that it could come to be seen as normal
required and "responsible behaviour" in the same way that some US
schools routinely test all pupils for tuberculosis before admission.

John Walters, director of the White House's office of national drug
control policy, was speaking after meeting Jim Knight, an education
minister. While Mr Walters said he had no authority to comment on the
UK's drug policies, he made it clear that the US would continue to
promote the tough line on drugs that has interested the British government.

"Some schools in the United States say a child needs to have a TB
test," he said. "It's not considered to be an invasion of privacy.
It's responsible behaviour. I believe we're very close to be able to
think about that in terms of substance abuse."

Random drug testing has already started in schools in Kent. The
government is taking part with Kent county council in a pilot
project, overseen by Peter Walker, the headteacher of Abbey school in
Faversham. In April Ruth Kelly, the then education secretary, told a
teachers' conference that Abbey had found it "a hugely effective way
of creating peer pressure against taking drugs in school".

Mr Walters said cannabis use was not just a matter of personal choice
and the expression of freedom in the same way as a preference for
clothes and hairstyles. "We're still living as if substance abuse is
a fashion statement," he said.

Taking a strong line against marijuana was "not being judgmental but
showing that we care".

Up to 700 schools in the US have adopted random drug testing, he
said, and one school a week was joining them. He said it was not his
business to criticise the reclassification of cannabis in the UK but
he believed cannabis was "a dead-end drug and a stepping stone to addiction".

He added: "There's no question that these substances acting on human
beings are bad for them and leads them to reach out for other drugs . ".

The US policies were based on scientific evidence - some of it from
the UK - that cannabis was linked to psychosis and schizophrenia. "We
have a particular problem of our attitudes towards cannabis which
hinders policy and hinders people going into treatment," he said.

"The attitude is that it's only marijuana. It doesn't help if your
kids are playing Russian roulette that they are using a smaller
calibre weapon."

Mr Walters strongly opposed harm reduction policies such as needle
exchanges and injection rooms, saying they were "morally dubious".
"It is a question of why you would want to use a Band-Aid against the
serious disease of addiction when there is a solution," he said.

Permitting such harm reduction measures gave the impression that
"society allows a stance of it's OK to be an addict", he said.

US opposition to harm reduction measures is likely to come under
serious criticism at the International Aids conference in Toronto next week.