Of all the criticisms of the War on Terror (and there are many legitimate ones), at least there appears to be no intention on the part of the prosecutors to deliberately target children.
Alas, the same cannot be said for the War on Drugs:
PUPILS at a secondary school will undergo random drug testing when they return from the Christmas holiday next week in what is believed to be the first state scheme of its kind.
Students as young as 11 at The Abbey School in Faversham, Kent, will have mouth swabs taken to detect the use of drugs including cannabis, cocaine and Ecstasy, Peter Walker, the headmaster, said.
Oh but why settle for all these namby-pamby, milquetoast, half-measures? There is only one sure way to stop children taking drugs: kill them.
Yes, that’s it! Kill the little bastards. Think of all the valuable police and court time it will save, not to mention precious and overstretched NHS resources.
Kill them all now. You know it makes sense. If it saves just one child from a life on drugs it’s worth it. It’s for their own good. It’s called ‘tough love’…etc…etc… (adding shopworn cliches infinitum).
We can apply this to poor kids in africa as well: what better way to save them from a life of AIDS?
Not only that, but we can solve the world’s hunger problems by letting Third Worlders eat the children.
Good plan – treat schoolkids like criminals, and give asylum to terrorists. Welcome to the future.
The best solution to keeping kids off of drugs aren’t State enforced measures like these, or even using reason. The best way to keep kids off of drugs is by giving them firm beatings on a regular basis.
I hereby propose that the beating of small children be declared legal as it is the best way to make sure they are brought up properly.
Catch a kid with a little pot? Then beat the little bastard unconscious. That’ll learn him good!
My plan is flawless. You cannot argue against it so you must simply accept it for it is perfect.
Better yet, and I think this would really work. Make every kid you catch taking drugs go and participate in as many anti drug seminars, peer counseling groups, meetings, etc as can be fit into the little brats time. If that kind of monstrous inanity doesn’t make them renounce the magical pills and grasses then what will.
Weird. On the bright side, it’s not actually compulsory – parents can opt out of the scheme. However, since the Gvt. is set on working parents up into a state of terror about their childrens’ possible drug habits, they are doubtless queueing up for the chance to find out for sure what little Jonny’s been smoking / eating / shooting up in the playground.
I wonder what the error rate for these tests is – either in the test itself, or in paperwork mistakes in getting the results back….
J
Oh yes, and via looking at the pictures section, I just learned that a Croatian, and a lovely one at that, is one of the (resting) contributors to this site! Good to know that some of my own people do occasionally engage in truly intelligent discourse!
“Students” as young as 11?
Come on guys, resist this creeping Americanisation!
The word for the inmates of secondary schools is “Pupils”; Students are those who (somtimes) attend establishments of higher “education”.
Would anyone like to place bets on how long this invasion of privacy may remain ‘voluntary’ before parental refusal is taken as ‘evidence’ of child abuse?
String the Head up by his thumbs!
JG
I hope that parents get their derrieres in gear and protest about this bit of authoritarianism. Yet another reason to keep your child out of the state school system.
Main Entry: 1pu·pil
Pronunciation: ‘pyü-p&l
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English pupille minor ward, from Middle French, from Latin pupillus male ward (from diminutive of pupus boy) & pupilla female ward, from diminutive of pupa girl, doll
1 : a child or young person in school or in the charge of a tutor or instructor : STUDENT
2 : one who has been taught or influenced by a famous or distinguished person
Main Entry: stu·dent
Pronunciation: ‘stü-d&nt, ‘styü-, chiefly Southern -d&nt
Function: noun
Usage: often attributive
Etymology: Middle English, from Latin student-, studens, from present participle of studEre to study — more at STUDY
1 : SCHOLAR, LEARNER; especially : one who attends a school
2 : one who studies : an attentive and systematic observer
From Roget’s Thesaurus;
student: n. Pupil, scholar, schoolboy
Eventually, here in the states, drugs will be legalized. Now is a good time.
Congress should pass a Law creating a class of drugs called recreational. Put fermented potables, Cigarettes, Pot, etc, in there and have it go thru the normal process of the FDA to assure public saftey. Then the Drug companies can get to work on creating new recreational drugs. To sing the tune ‘One that won’t make me wreck my car, one that makes me fell like I feel when I’m with you”.
The enormous profits can be use to subsidize life saving or life style enhancemant drugs. Quality contol will help prevent accidents. It will be a fatal blow to organized crime. More people working instead of in Jail.
The Last two US Presidents BOTH used illegal drugs. It is doubtful that there will ever be another American President that hasn’t tried Illegal Drugs. The War on Drugs has been lost. Now it’s time to come to terms with the real bad idea of legislating morality.
By 2012 it will be an election issue on this side of the Pond.
Short note to say that was hilarious.
Keep’em coming.
Bollox!
ADE
I came to this site indirectly by way of The Big Blog Company(Link), after trying to find a good weblog designer. After a few hours surfing the one thing I notice is the awe that Samizdata.net seems to be held in across the weblog community, and therefore it saddens me to read such articles and comments as have been posted both above and elsewhere on Samizdata. I feel that some people clearly need to state on here that they are making a ‘joke’, if that is their intention.
The awe in which Samizdata is held across “the website community”? Awe as in bloody awe-ful, I presume.
Sonia, this place is run by a crowd who think that although the State has failed in the War on Drugs, the War on Crime, the War on Porn and the War on Obesity in its own country, it can win a “War on Terror” by killing lots and lots and lots of “Islamofascists” thousands of miles from home. They call this “libertarianism”, and they garnish this rather large exception to their general scepticism about the power and rights of government over individuals with occasional bursts of gun fetishism and professions of non-concern for the fate of victims of natural disasters, just to show what tough guys they are.
But don’t worry, it’s all just in fun. Their main political activity is taking photos of themselves gurning and getting pissed in their back gardens. Sometimes this site looks like a downmarket “Tatler”.
We’ve been killling children for 20 yeras, first it was called abortion and now we call it “termination”.
We have taught mothers that children are a disease which can be cured by a visit to the doctor.
Er, how many were killed in the War on Porn?
The War on Terror isn’t morality, it’s survival.
Well the “War on Drugs” is not doing well since the price of most illicit drugs has actually gone down since its inception. Besides that it has made heroes out of drug dealers and made lots of people very rich. If you want to stop the drug trade, you need to educate people to not use em’. As every good capitalist knows, if there is a market that market will be serviced.
There shouldn’t be a war on porn nor should their be a war on obesity. Neither of those two things should be the remit of the government. We don’t think goverment has failed in these two endeavors…we don’t think they should be engaging in them full stop!
Imagine thinking that some of the posts and comments are serious…
Happy New Year, y’all. And, yes, I hold you in high esteem, if not downright awe.
You know, the British government could solve this problem easily by making abortion mandatory. Think of the money that could be spent on improving government services if you could free up all of the cash wasted on education and pediatricians.
And then, of course, there’s always this.
The way the lefties make themselves indispensible is, they create social chaos – and then rush in with a brush and broom to fix it, thus perpetuating themselves until an electorate somewhere, in some lifetime, proves itself wise. Take away guns, then have social programmes to ‘counsel’ victims of burglaries which would never have been attempted had not guns been outlawed (save guns owned by Yardies and other ‘ethnic minorities’). So the parasites of the left continue to suck the life out of healthy societies.
Although, before someone beats me to it, any society that allowed itself to be sucked dry by lefties, whose bizarre philosophy goes against the whole reason of human motivation, deserves its fate.
Britain, which failed to defend its values against lefties promoting the destruction of our society under the guise of ‘caring’, deserves what it is getting in the form of Tony and Cherie-Antoinette and their once-, twice-, thrice-disgraced clique in the Petit Trianon.
The resulting data could be shared for “child protection” purposes under the Children Act (and maybe used sell appropriate music to kids according to their drug habit through their Connexions accounts). So yes, JG is right: “parents refused drug test” will go on your record.
Luniversal, the war on drugs and the campaign to crush terror groups is hardly the same class of issue, though you will find plenty of instances on this blog of our criticisms of daft security rules and the like. Not all libertarians agree on the right way to combat terror, by the way. This blog has tended to take a more belligerent approach to rogue states like Iraq than other sites have done.
Your snarky remarks about our occasional gatherings – what’s the problem with that? You sound like a bit of a sourpuss. Get a life.