The stupidity of the government (will) kill children with drug tests

This article* will explain why the idea of introducing urine drug testing among students is frightening and counterproductive. We begin by clarifying that adolescent drug use is not a good thing, worthy of admiration, on the contrary – whatever drug policies we adopt, we must first analyze what will happen to the children.

That is precisely why it is worrying that connected circles are promoting the testing of students - last week it was also spoken by the parliamentary leader of the largest political force GERB - Tsvetan Tsvetanov during a traditional meeting of MPs with the anti-drug aunties convenient to the government.

This text will make it clear why, besides being expensive, the idea is scary, dangerous, and will lead to more mortality and harm as a result of use among children.

We start with the fact that young people, just like adults, have a desire to change their minds in one form or another. And no matter how harsh the laws and the persecution of the use of substances that help in the process of escaping from everyday life, nowhere in the world has this phenomenon been eradicated. A similar failure awaits this project, because you cannot ignore human nature. You cannot prohibit it with a law. But let's get to the point:

Testing is dangerous and will increase mortality among child users.

I say this with a clear idea of how scary it sounds, but I also say it as someone whose predictions on the subject come true. At the beginning of the year, in an official statement submitted to the Ministry of Health, I predicted that their policy of prohibition puts the youngest people at risk of death. A few days later, in Bulgaria, we witnessed the first death of a minor girl as a result of using a synthetic drug that imitates cannabis.

Testers, no matter how high-quality and expensive they are, cannot detect a substance that was invented the day after the tester was manufactured. Alas, they cannot detect any of the so-called designer drugs, and these are the most commonly used substances among children. It was from synthetic (designer) weed that 16-year-old Teodora died. Students prefer the new substances because they are cheaper than cannabis, harder to detect by parents and authorities, and can often be obtained legally.

If testing is introduced, it will be able to detect the presence of cannabis, amphetamine, cocaine, opiates, etc. traditional substances. Just a note that it is impossible to overdose and die from cannabis, and amphetamine is widely prescribed to children in the States to treat various conditions, there are drugs based on cocaine and opiates (heroin).

However, the tester will not detect mephedrone or PMA (better known as “Doctor Death”); it will not detect 4-chloromethamphetamine, which is one of the most toxic stimulants known to mankind and we found it in a pill sold to teenagers in Sofia; it will not detect ‎JWH-018, which the late Teodora most likely smoked. If you are a 16-year-old teenager who, as we said, most likely wants to experience alternative states of consciousness, and you have these options before you, you will most likely choose substances that will not get you in trouble with your parents and school… and put yourself at mortal risk.

I have been observing it for the last two years, in which I have tested almost everything that is sold on the streets and schools of the capital. There is no other person among the authorities, the anti-drug aunts, the mothers, the doctors, the psychiatrists, who is more aware than me of what the children in Bulgaria are rocking ( see why ). In addition to being aware, I am the only one with whom they have a frank conversation about their use and I know that for them death is not so scary. It is scarier for "mom to find out". I have had moments when I received a call from a 17-year-old boy that his 15-year-old girlfriend had a problem after using MDMA. He refused to take her to the hospital precisely for fear that their parents would find out and then "they are dead"...

Stigma is the most dangerous thing, and these tests will reinforce it.

What happens after we find out that a child has used drugs?

According to Bulgarian law, if he is caught in possession of narcotics, he is a criminal. According to school regulations, use is prohibited. What can we expect from a society that strongly stigmatizes users and addicts?
How will the future develop for a child who, in his desire to experiment, smoked a cannabis cigarette and tested positive?
Knowing cases where parents have felt more shame than relief from the fact that their son narrowly survived an overdose, I don't want to imagine answers to the above questions.

Testing is ineffective

Amphetamine can be detected in urine for up to 10 days after use. 99% of the LSD will be out of your body within a few hours of use. Alas, your cannabis test will still be positive 40 days after use. What results can we expect then?
Students will be much more relaxed about using substances that are more harmful and risky to their health and psyche, and safer substances will be avoided.
According to Dr. Sharon Levy of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the tests often give false positives due to various medications. Imagine what it would cost a child if they were wrongly labeled as a drug addict.

But let's say what is effective, because, as we agreed, we need to build relationships and educational models in which fewer children use drugs.

The Colorado Example: I wonder why at the meeting between anti-drug aunties and corporate representatives the other day, the statistic that for the second year since cannabis was legalized in the state of Colorado, the lowest use among teenagers was observed there was not mentioned?!

The example of Portugal: If, due to the excitement over how much commission they will receive from ordering testers, the anti-drug aunts missed the above news, they cannot help but know that since 2001, Portugal has decriminalized the possession of all narcotics, and as a result, use among teenagers, among many other negative manifestations, has fallen for 15 consecutive years.

Testing is a violation of freedoms

What kind of lesson are we teaching people who are yet to enter society by constantly showing them that we neither trust them nor can they make responsible decisions for their own lives?

How, by constantly controlling him, do we teach a child the highest value - freedom? How do we expect him to become an autonomous and mature human being if everything in his life is controlled and predetermined by someone else?

Moreover, it is extremely immoral for drug testing to be voted on by MPs and implemented by a minister whose urine samples we have not yet seen.

It smells of corruption.

Knowing the people in the National Council for Narcotics and their relationships with the criminal world; the MP from the NFSB and the Patriotic Front Boris Yachev and his Petrichki and Blagoevgrad donors; Temenuzhka Lyubenova and her affinity for printing luxury calendars and poetry collections with taxpayer money in the printing house of her best friend and secretary of the NSNNV Svetlana Yordanova plus the entire partisan army of academics and drug "experts", I have no doubt that the company that will produce the testers, the distributor that will import them... and of course, the amounts that everyone in the chain will receive are already clear.

Again, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, testing one student costs $24. If we assume that there are 100,000 high school-age children in Bulgaria, this amounts to more than 4 million leva of spending every time we want to find out whether Bulgarian youth has snorted amphetamine in the last 10 days. No wonder Tsvetan Tsvetanov liked the idea… How many commissions will fall…

If, after all this reading, you still like the idea of testing, then you are one of those hopeless cases like the president of the Philippines, who on his first day in office called on the parents of addicted people to simply kill them...
...but if you're not one of those people, welcome to the Liberty 420 page and let's figure out together how to protect children from this dangerous and criminal nonsense.

*The author is a participant and organizer of a number of international conferences on drug policy and prevention among children, founder of the Liberty 420 cause, which provides anonymous and free tests for the analysis of the content of street drugs. Over the past two years, the organization has conducted nearly 100 tests for various substances in Sofia and has prevented the spread of extremely dangerous and deadly substances such as fentanyl. 4-chloromethamphetamine and PMA/PMMA

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