Addressing the drug problems in schools and workplaces

Those who oppose random or general drug tests in schools and workplaces in the name of human rights, are only thinking of the interests of the few drug users but close their eyes to the many victims and potential victims of drug-related crimes. Students and employees who resist school administrators’ and company managers’ positive efforts to safeguard their students and employees, are either afraid they might be found positive or they are simply ignorant of, or oblivious to, the pernicious effects of illegal drugs on the lives, safety, and security of millions of peace-loving citizens.

The drug syndicates have successfully penetrated the schools. Many of pupils, students, teachers, and non-teaching personnel have been infected by this social malady. The school administrators have the inherent responsibility to exercise extraordinary diligence in protecting their pupils and employees (whether teaching or non-teaching). In the workplaces, the employers have the inherent management prerogatives to take all necessary precautions and install all sorts of mechanisms to address the drug menace with decisiveness and urgency. Students and employees cannot reasonably invoke the human rights as a means to avoid the administrators’ powers and the employers’ prerogatives to conduct random drug tests.

I agree with DepEd Secretary Leonor Briones that drug tests in schools should not include elementary pupils, as that is the law. But high school and college students are not exempt. Parents and guardians should not resist any initiative to address the drug malady. The president has taken as his most important advocacy and campaign to fight the drug problem in all sectors and among all the people and institutions in the country. The government is doing its best to fight this social menace from its roots up to its last component. The least we can do is to cooperate in this national initiative.

Any student who is found positive should be properly counseled, subject to psychological, medical, and other forms of interventions because, in a sense, they are more victim than offender. They should not be treated as criminals but as patients who need medical and psychological treatment. Employees who willfully disobey the management’s order to take a drug test must, after due process, be subject to disciplinary action. Willful disobedience to such lawful orders should be sanctioned as insubordination. The Supreme Court has, for a number of times, upheld the validity of management action to discipline and even dismissed employees found using drugs.  Filipinos who care for our country and people should support this crusade. Evil would triumph, indeed, if and when good men choose to do nothing. The victims of drugs have human rights too.