Maambong urges guidelines for conduct of drug testing

Cebu Provincial Board Member Victor Maambong expressed support to the plan of the Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB) to conduct random drug testing for the students.

But Maambong, who is the board’s majority floor leader, wants the DDB to provide strict and clear guidelines in the conduct of the random drug testing in all high schools and tertiary level education.

“While the random drug testing is commendable and worthy of support, the DDB still has to assure the anxious public that it has set in place foolproof safeguards to preclude negligence or malicious machination aimed at incriminating innocent students,” Maambong said in his proposed resolution, which it will be discussed in today’s board session.

Through the conduct of random drug testing, the DDB intends to stump the unmitigated rise in the number of illegal drug users, most of whom are students, according to Maambong. The board member, however, said that there seems to be an absence of guidelines and safeguards that set the parameters in the conduct of drug testing in order to shield it from any mishandling or tampering of urine specimen.

This, Maambong said will alter the result and destroy the integrity of the tests.

In a recent Supreme Court decision promulgated last November, the legal basis for random drug testing for high school and college students has been established.

In its ruling in Social Justice Society vs. Dangerous Drugs Board and Philippine Drug enforcement Agency, the High Court affirmed the validity of the provision in the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act mandating ‘suspicionless’ drug tests for students in secondary and tertiary schools.

Quoting from the decision, the said random drug testing in schools should be viewed as “a kind of search in which a reasonable parent might need to engage,” and that “minor students have fewer rights than an adult, and are subject to the custody and supervision of their parents, guardians and schools.”

In the guidelines that the Department of Education issued for the implementation of the random drug tests, students that will be found positive are required to undergo confirmatory testing.

The random drug test would be conducted by a Department of Health-accredited laboratory.

Last year, DepEd records showed that some 1.3 percent of students tested were found positive of drug use in the initial tests, but only 0.8 percent tested positive in the confirmatory test.

Secretary of Education Jesli Lapus assured parents and students that results of the tests cannot be used as grounds for expulsion, but schools reserve the right for disciplinary action.

He said that random drug testing will serve as deterrent for students who are influenced by their peers into taking illegal drugs. The Commission on Higher Education for its part earlier asked university school heads to arrange random drug tests with the Department of Health among college students. — Garry B. Lao/NLQ (THE FREEMAN)