Prepare for a backlash

With remarkably little fanfare considering the possible implications, two bills that are calling for the mandatory drug testing of school and university students were approved by the National Assembly Standing Committee on Thursday, April 19^th. The aim of the bills is to discourage the use of drugs by students as well as strengthen the role of universities in the prevention of drug abuse. The proposal is that there be annual unannounced drug testing by educational institutions which in itself is going to be a huge, complex and controversial exercise that is going to have human-rights lawyers and activists crawling all over it from minute one. The bills propose to protect the identities of drug users thus identified in order to protect them from stigmatisation as well as facilitate their access to rehabilitation centres.

Presumably those that put the bills together hail from a planet other than Earth and a country other than Pakistan. The number of operational drug rehabilitation centres in the country can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Secondly, the protection of any identity in a country where medical confidentiality is a distant dream is extremely unlikely. Then factor in the cost of a national programme, assume the cooperation of the many universities, colleges and upper schools, the training and resourcing of staff, and they would need to be medically qualified if they were taking a blood sample — and they would need at least some basic training — and then the cost of setting up national testing facilities with a capacity to absorb what in all likelihood is going to have a throughput of millions of specimens annually?

Assuming all these factors have received due consideration then by all means convert the bills to law. The bills were opposed by the education minister who said they were “not feasible”, and we can but agree with him. Doubtless they were drafted with the best of intentions considering there is anecdotally a widespread problem of drug abuse in the education system, but an intervention a little less ambitious and more tethered to the real world would be a better place to start. Best of luck.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 21^st, 2018.

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