Schoolyard drug tests rejected
Updated
The Australian Government is vowing to take action against binge drinking amongst young people, but it's being advised not to go too far when it comes to tackling the problem of illicit drugs in schools.
Presenter: Simon Lauder
Speakers: Gino Vumbaca, The Executive Director of the Australian National Council on Drugs; Ann Bressington, South Australian Independent MP, Professor Ann Roche, Flinders University
SIMON LAUDER: Some private schools already test their students for illicit drugs, but these high school students aren't keen on the idea being extended.
VOX POP 1: I think it's a bit silly, and it might be an invasion of privacy in some ways.
VOX POP 2: We don't really need to be tested on drugs, seeing as, like, I'm in year 7, and, like, no one's going to really do that at school, and it's a bit like a waste of money and stuff, and time.
SIMON LAUDER: South Australian Independent MP, Ann Bressington, has been pushing for student drug testing for two years.
ANN BRESSINGTON: The proposal is that all children from year 8 to year 12 will be randomly tested twice a year. I would like to see it taken up nationally.
SIMON LAUDER: Professor Ann Roche from Flinders University has spent more than a year researching the proposal for schoolyard drug tests and her findings are being released today.
ANN ROCHE: It's not a good idea.
SIMON LAUDER: Why not?
ANN ROCHE: Not enough evidence to suggest that it's worth the effort, extremely expensive, and then there's a raft of potential negatives or downsides that could result from it.
SIMON LAUDER: Such as?
ANN ROCHE: What it would do is undermine trust in the school situation and the trust between students and teachers, teachers and parents, and students and parents as well.
The drug-testing procedures themselves, like all testing procedures, are not infallible, and we know that the levels of false positives can be really quite substantial.
SIMON LAUDER: The report for the National Council on Drugs found one saliva test for each student would cost at least $355 million every year. The council's executive director, Gino Vumbaca, says the use of illicit drugs in schools is already in steady decline and testing students could do more harm than good.
GINO VUMBACA: You can imagine, you know, websites and chatrooms all talking about how you get around these things. That's not what we want kids talking about in relation to drug and alcohol use, how you avoid testing and detection.
They're moving into adulthood. They have to take some responsibility for their actions and behaviour and make informed decisions, and testing undermines that.
SIMON LAUDER: What advice would you like the Government to take from this report?
GINO VUMBACA: Well, I think it's fairly clear that what we have is working. There are some programs that are very good that have been identified in the report and we should focus on investing in those to deal with drug use in the schools.
SIMON LAUDER: Mr Vumbaca says school drug tests could even contribute to another problem which is much bigger than illicit drugs: binge drinking.
GINO VUMBACA: What drug testing does is focus on illicit drugs, which are a small percentage of the problem, and in a way, and that may be one of the unintended consequences, may push some people to actually consume alcohol, because we're not going to test for that, as if somehow that's sending a message, "it's OK."
