SPEECH IN THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
Wednesday 21 February 2007
(RANDOM DRUG TESTING) AMENDMENT BILL
Adjourned debate on second reading.
(Continued from 7 February. Page 1397.)
The Hon. SANDRA KANCK: I have major concerns with this bill, and I hope that there will be enough common¿sense in this chamber for it to be defeated. The bill itself is poorly thought out and this is demonstrated by the fact that the bill itself is three pages long yet the mover of the bill has tabled three pages of amendments. If this bill were to pass I would be actively working to encourage parents to object to such testing and I would be working to create a civil diso¿bedience movement amongst high school students to refuse to undertake the test. It is not that I advocate the use of drugs, but I deplore the idea of testing people in this way. It is not the way in which our schools should be used.
This is part of a steadily increasing number of incursions into our freedoms. It could well be counterproductive in terms of school absenteeism and encourage greater experimentation in drugs that may be more addictive and more harmful but used because they are not able to be detected by the testing regime. Our schools are not police stations: they are places of education. This bill is a dangerous step in changing that. There is at present a degree of trust between a student and a teacher, but that relationship faces deterioration and in some cases destruction if random drug testing is instituted. As a former teacher I know that teachers have a role to play in observing declining grades or counterproductive behaviour of students and assisting, where possible, to turn that around. They can work with the student or refer them to a school counsellor, and if drug taking is discovered as a contributing factor then appropriate action can be taken; and any counsel¿lor worth their salt would find whether or not the drug taking is masking an underlying problem and deal with that problem.
The Hon. Ms Bressington refers to examples of drug testing in some other nations. In regards to the extracurricular schools drug testing that US schools can opt into, she quotes Supreme Court judge Justice Clarence Thomas in that court's judgment on the issue as proof of the efficacy of testing. I think it is just as valid to quote another of the judges who found differently. Justice Ruth Bader said it was `unreason¿able, capricious and even perverse'. And that is what I think of this bill: it is unreasonable, capricious and even perverse.
The Hon. Ms Bressington's proposition is that if we can stop adolescents from using drugs it will stop drug habits develop¿ing into adulthood. As a hypothesis this might seem to be so, but the scientific literature does not support it. In an opinion piece on 3 January this year in The New York Times, juvenile justice researcher Mike Males reported that an analysis of available data at the California Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs revealed that `the biggest contributors to California's drug abuse, death and injury toll are educated middle-aged women living in the Central Valley and rural areas, while the fastest declining lowest risk populations are urban black and Latino teenagers'. I think I heard the Hon. Ms Lensink say she does not believe that.
The Hon. J.M.A. Lensink: I didn't believe the stuff about middle aged women.
The Hon. SANDRA KANCK: It has come from data from the California Department of Alcohol and Drug Program, so it really does not matter whether you believe it or not, it is what the data says. Mike Males also examined the figures published by conserva¿tive anti-drugs group Monitor¿ing the Future, and discov¿ered:
In years in which a higher percentage of high school seniors told the survey takers they used illicit drugs, teenagers consistently reported and experienced lower rates of crime, murder, drug-related hospital emergencies and death, suicides, HIV infection, school dropouts, delinquency, pregnancy, violence, theft in and outside of school, and fights with parents, employers and teachers.
The real problem exists with the baby boomers, it seems. It continues:
Among Americans in their 40s and 50s, deaths from illicit drug overdoses have risen by 800 per cent since 1980, including 300 per cent in the last decade.
I know it might be counterintuitive, and it does not stack up against the more sensational media reporting about drug use, but these are excellent examples of why we should not base our drug problems on intuition, what we believe, or how we feel.
As Ms Bressington is relying on the experience and programs of other countries, the transcript of a press conference by the Monitoring the Future group makes interesting reading. When it was releasing its figures for 2004 with great fanfare at a well-organised press conference, it was put under pressure from drug law reform advocates which resulted in the principal researcher, Dr Lloyd Johnston, responding:
We looked at schools doing any kind of testing, mostly for cause, and didn't find any statistically significant differences in drug use rates between schools that tested and those that didn't.
He also stated:
We also looked at schools that did random tests of student athletes. . . and again there were no significant differences in the rates of marijuana use or illicit drug use in general.
He further stated:
Drug testing up to the present time hasn't been effective.
This is from a group that is advocating the testing. The quotes speak for themselves and show that the program advocated in this bill is not likely to provide either educational or health outcomes for young people in South Australia.
I was pleased to hear the Hon. Ian Hunter's contribution on behalf of the government, which was that the government will be opposing the bill. It means that, even if passed in this chamber, it would be defeated in the House of Assembly; again, this shows the value of having a bicameral system of parliament where every idea has to be tested twice.
