Random drug tests for college students tried next month

The Department of Health (DOH) will attempt next month to conduct random drug testing among college students as part of programs to eliminate drug addiction in the country.

Dr. Benjamin Reyes, the DOH’s supervising officer for its anti-drug abuse program, said they failed to implement the drug tests last year because of strong resistance from college students, who said that subjecting them to the tests would violate their human rights.

"We were not able to implement it. But we hope that come June, we’ll be able to start the implementation of testing," Reyes told The STAR.

Reyes said the students argued that there are new sets of officers in their student councils and the officers have not been consulted about the program.

"We’ll conduct new rounds of consultation just to satisfy concerns if that’s what they want," he said.

The DOH intends to randomly test around 8,670 students in 25 schools from each region nationwide.

Last year, the DOH found that almost 77,000 or 1.2 percent of 6.4 million high school students nationwide abused substances.

The situation was unveiled after the agency randomly tested 5,648 high school students for drugs.

Marijuana appeared to be the substance most abused by students, followed by methamphetamine hydrochloride or shabu.

A Dangerous Drugs Board survey in 1998 showed that there were 1.8 million drug addicts in the Philippines then while 1.6 million others were casual users. The number of drug addicts and casual users, however, is increasing by almost 100 percent every year.

Reyes said the program was meant to gauge the drug addiction problem in schools and to formulate strategies to address the situation.

He added that the Commission on Higher Education had proposed that drug tests be done on a voluntary basis.

"I don’t think we can do that because that will defeat the purpose of the drug testing. It’s already in the law. Our efforts will go to waste if we conduct it voluntarily," Reyes said.