DRUG TESTING FOR THE LITTLE DARLINGS?

LONDON - The British government wants to introduce compulsory drug testing for schoolchildren.  This is because ever-larger proportions of them take drugs at ever-earlier ages.  Needless to say, the civil liberties organizations are up in arms about it: It is every 10-year-old's inalienable right to expand his consciousness with the aid of dope, ecstasy, heroin or crack. 

There are other possible objections to the proposal, however. 

The first is that the government has no idea what to do when the little darlings test positive.  It says it will not be punitive towards them, but will offer them treatment instead. 

This supposes, of course, that there is something to treat, and moreover that such a treatment exists, the truth of either of which suppositions is highly doubtful. 

One might as well try to treat the sea for its tendency to be wet. 

Moreover, as with most government proposals, there is the distinct possibility that it will have precisely the opposite effect to that which is allegedly intended.  ( Of course, whenever such a paradoxical result happens, there is a call for the governmental program that produced it to be expanded: If at first you don't succeed, spend, spend some more.  )

In addition to the natural rebelliousness of youth, such as most of us went through, we now live in a thoroughly antinomian social atmosphere and culture, in which freedom and independence of spirit are thought to consist largely of setting one's face against received wisdom and standards. 

You can't praise a work of art more highly than by calling it transgressive, or by suggesting that it breaks the last taboo.  ( Last taboos are like great prima donnas making positively their final appearances, that is to say they keep coming back.  ) In such a culture, bad is good, and vice is virtue. 

It would not be surprising, therefore, if children -- at least among quite a large proportion of the population -- actually wanted to test positive to drugs, to as many dangerous drugs as possible in fact.  No one will gain any kudos, or street credibility, by testing negative time after time.  That would be sissy, and macho is better. 

And since there will be no sanction in any case for having tested positive, the advantage will be all for having done so. 

What of the parents, though?

Ah yes, the parents. 

Among my patients are quite a number of teachers, and they all tell me the same thing: If they report to parents nowadays that their offspring are misbehaving, indeed are making themselves thoroughly obnoxious, the parents will almost invariably side with their offspring. 

How dare the teacher say such a thing?

Most parents are now so thoroughly egotistical and self-important that they cannot conceive that the fruit of their loins should be other than perfect.  Immaculate conception is now the norm.  Any criticism of their offspring is thus an implicit reflection upon or criticism of them, which is intolerable as well as unjustified. 

So if their offspring test positive, many parents will blame not themselves, but the school, or the authorities, or indeed anyone but themselves.  They will be angry that the school has not merely failed to prevent their darlings from taking drugs, but has actively corrupted them.  They will march down to the school and demand an explanation from the teachers, whom they will be prepared to assault. 

It must, after all, be their fault that little Johnny smokes dope, or snorts cocaine, or whatever, because they -- the parents -- have given him everything, for example a television in his own bedroom.  Those who think I am exaggerating should listen to parents telling me that the habitual petulance of their child is a complete mystery to them because they have always bought him the latest energy-returning, electrically illuminated Nikes, as soon as he wanted them. 

In view of the natural perversity of man, and especially of youth, I have often wondered whether the solution to the drug problem would be not to forbid the taking of drugs during childhood, but to make it compulsory.  Imagine the squeals of disgust if children were actually obliged by their teachers in school to inhale alien substances through their nostrils, or better still, to inject them into their veins. 

Severe punishments would be meted out to those who failed to comply with teachers' instructions.  I suspect that in no time at all the resisters would be the heroes of the hour, while those who complied would be put off drugs for life.  "Now, children, take out your needles and syringes ..." In no time at all there would be a profound revulsion against drugs, and they would be entirely demystified. 

Since my modest proposal is unlikely ever to be implemented, however, some other means of dealing with the problem will have to be found. 

Testing children's urine, and then lamenting ineffectually over the result, is not such a means. 

It conduces to no end except increased government interference in our daily lives.