For the war on drugs to work, legal loopholes must be closed!

I have long thought that one of the most annoying aspects of the war on drugs is invasive drug testing, whether of employees, students, athletes, government officials, etc.. Despite our long (pre-1980s) constitutional tradition of bodily fluid freedom, most drug testing is mandated or directly encouraged by a myriad of government agencies or programs.

I don’t like singling out Republicans or conservatives, but the fact is that this especially obnoxious form of Orwellianism began in earnest during the Reagan years. To be fair, there were plenty of libertarian oriented Republicans who objected even though they didn’t call themselves libertarians, and I remember the unforgettable example of George Schultz (God bless him) who tried to stand up to it.

“US president Ronald Reagan insisted that all members of his Cabinet would have to submit to a compulsory urine test. Secretary of State designate (at that stage) George Shultz told Reagan that if he didn’t trust his proposed appointments sufficiently without the support of a negative urine test, then he should not appoint them. So Shultz became Secretary of State without the benefit of a urine test.

The American tradition of individuality aside (to say nothing of the Fourth Amendment), bear in mind that in those days, the idea was to test people for illegal drugs. If an employee was taking a drug legally, that was a different matter. One between the patient and his doctor.

Not now. The latest trend is to test and fire employees for taking legal, legitimately prescribed drugs:

The news, delivered in a phone call, left Sue Bates aghast: she was losing her job of 22 years after testing positive for a legally prescribed drug.

Her employer, Dura Automotive Systems, had changed the policy at its sprawling plant here to test for certain prescription drugs as well as illicit ones. The medication that Mrs. Bates was taking for back pain — hydrocodone, a narcotic prescribed by her doctor — was among many that the company, which makes car parts, had suddenly deemed unsafe.

“I don’t think it should end the way it did,” said Mrs. Bates, an assembly line worker who has sued Dura for discrimination and invasion of privacy. “You tell somebody you lost your job because you’re on prescription medication and they’re like, ‘Yeah, right.’ ”

“Yeah, right” is right! Drugs are immoral! ALL drugs! Especially pain killers given out to these whining, malingering, bellyachers who lack will power, and who need to be taught a lesson in how to buck up and live up to Puritan standards!

The new trend fits in with the new and evolving view of the war on drugs as a war on pain relief. (See M. Simon’s recent post, and my typical rants posts on the subject.)

Looking ahead, I can easily see why doctors are going to be ever more fearful of prescribing pain killers. Not only will government prosecutors eager for promotions be constantly looking over their shoulders, but they will have an entirely legitimate fear of being sued by patients who can be fired from their jobs for testing positive. (Traces of these drugs remain in the system long after the effects have worn off, so even if an employee had taken pain meds the evening before or several days earlier, he’d still test positive.)

With hitherto legal sources effectively spayed and neutered, this naturally means bigger profits for those in the illegal drug business.

You’d almost think doctors were a form of “competition.”

Not that it matters to any of the sons of bitches who seek to control citizens’ bodies, but I would rather have addicts getting their stuff from doctors than on the street, and I think most people would too if they really took the time to sit down and think about it.

But that wouldn’t matter, because “most people” are not in charge. They never have been and they never will be. Democracy only makes them imagine they are.

MORE: A word about why drug testing is like spaying and neutering. I don’t know whether there is a formal name for the psychological technique but those who have freedoms taken away (especially those they are told involve a civic duty) not only believe it is fair for others to suffer the same loss of freedom that they did, but they actually think it is “unfair” if they do not. Thus, people who have been pressured by society to cut off their dogs’ testicles see others as getting away with something. Similarly many a man who has submitted to the indignity of being made to pee in a cup will want his fellow men to suffer the same indignity. It’s only “fair.”

Those who rules us hope no one will notice that in the process, fairness itself has been dumbed down.