GMA takes war on drug addiction to city schools

President Arroyo has taken the fight against drug addiction to high schools in Metro Manila by ordering random drug tests in selected institutions.

In a brief ceremony at the Manila High School (MHS) in Intramuros, Mrs. Arroyo led the launching of a school-based anti-drug campaign expected to discourage the youth from drug abuse.

"Our laws on drug trafficking are stricter now. Before, someone must have at least 200 grams of illegal drugs before he can be sent to jail. I found it too weak so I ordered it to be lowered to 10 grams. Drug addiction must stop," she said.

The Department of Health (DOH), Department of Education, Dangerous Drugs Board and Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency jointly undertook this school-based anti-drug program, ongoing since September.

In Metro Manila, 17 out of 700 schools in the metropolis were chosen through computerized random sampling. MHS, which has 3,000 students, is the 16th school to participate in the program. Urine samples were taken from 40 students yesterday.

"This random drug testing is not to arrest individual drug pushers but to determine which schools have a rampant drug problem," Mrs. Arroyo told the MHS students.

She explained that for schools with a drug use problem, "investigation… and law enforcement will set in."

The President said the five government agencies that undertook this anti-drug program were merely implementing the Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002 that, among the other things, mandated the conduct of random drug-testing in schools.

National Security Threat

She warned anew that the illegal drugs problem in the country has reached the level of a national security threat because of the series of arrests of big-time drug lords and discoveries and seizures of large-scale shabu laboratories and other syndicates involved in the trafficking of illegal drugs.

The President, on a positive note, said her administration’s all-out war against drugs may have finally broken the back of the lucrative illegal drug trade.

"These drug lords, some of them even Triad syndicate leaders, used to be ‘untouchables’ but they are now being arrested and jailed without being able to post bail," the President cited.

Mrs. Arroyo vowed to continue the government’s anti-illegal drugs campaign to protect the future of the Filipino youth from this menace.

She reaffirmed her policy that there will be "no sacred cows" in the government’s anti-drug war, warning police and military officials as well as politicians against coddling drug pushers or drug users.

The President said almost all of the students tested in the first 15 schools were "statistically clean," though a DOH insider said one school, privately run, was found to have a high prevalence of drug use.

The source said while the prevalence of drug use in other schools ranged from zero to six percent of the student samples taken, tests conducted at the private school showed that 15 percent of student samples had traces of illegal drugs in their urine.

The private school, the source added, will be prioritized in the intervention programs which the government will implement by next year.

DOH Secretary Manuel Dayrit said 20 to 40 students, chosen through computerized random sampling, are tested at each selected school.

He said the scheme is intended to determine the prevalence of drug abuse among high school students, the group most vulnerable to taking up illegal drugs.

Dayrit said that if none of the urine samples test positive for drugs, the DOH assumes there is no drug problem in that school. But if the DOH finds two of the 20 students tested at a school positive for drug use, there is a possibility that 10 percent of the student population are drug users.

He assured that the identities of the students who tested positive for drugs would be kept confidential.

"We are not even putting labels on the test tubes. What we want to know is to identify schools with a drug problem and then we’ll launch an honest-to-goodness drug intervention program," Dayrit said.

Intervention programs include a beefed-up anti-drug education campaign, counseling for "casual drug users" and rehabilitation for "drug-dependent students."

Drug-addicted students, according to the President, will continue their studies at the rehabilitation center while undergoing treatment.