A DRUG TEST FOR TEACHERS?

The report this week that a college teacher had been arrested and
charged after being found in an alleged drug den must have sent
shivers up and down the spines of parents, not only in Bacolod City,
but also in the towns and cities of Negros Occidental.

As gathered from police reports, the police had raided the house
believed to be used for drug sessions which they had been monitoring
for several months now. The house, located in Barangay 8 in the city
belonged to a couple, the original suspects, who, however, were not in
the place when the raid took place. Instead, the team from the Bacolod
City Police Office Drug Enforcement Unit came upon the teacher and
three other persons, also from the same barangay. The team also
recovered items and substances that confirmed what they had suspected
and had set out to seize.

Although it is already a known fact that drug users, and even pushers
and traffickers come from various sectors of the community, and have
been identified to belong to different social and economic levels, as
well as ages, the arrest of an educator and the discovery of what
appears to be incontrovertible evidence against him, is far more
alarming than that of any other. As a college teacher, he has access
to young people, most of them teenagers who are right at the very
susceptible time of their lives when it could be so easy to influence
or led into bad practices.

The police reports, while stating that the teacher had admitted his
profession and even the subjects he handled in college, unfortunately
did not mention whether those arrested with him were students or even
co-teachers in the college where he was employed. But could he have
influenced any of those young people in his classes to join him in his
"diversion"? And, the more fearsome possibility - how many other
mentors like him are out there, interacting with impressionable students?

There is now a law requiring drivers of vehicles to submit to drug
testing. So far, the tests have ferreted out a lot of drug users who
have been refused licenses until they "clear" themselves. Considering
the sensitivity of their work, perhaps it is time for a similar law
for mentors.