20 June 2014

Dear Sir,

Are you aware that some work places are randomly drug testing college students for marijuana? Is this legal?

From experience, most adults will agree that this demographic is more likely to party hard than any other age group.

On college campuses these kids will be exposed to marijuana, binge drinking, ecstasy, cocaine and heroin.

In the US more teens die from prescription drugs than cocaine and heroin put together.

So if we know that a sizeable portion of college students are going to smoke pot, why on earth randomly test them when one spliff smoked 3 weeks ago can still show up in a drug test? We all know full well that weed is the lesser of these evils and to spout abstinence is like an ostrich putting its head in the sand.

The Honourable Premier has done a great injustice to the college students on our island by taking a conservative stand on pot and blocking moves to take the criminality out of using it recreationally in small amounts for personal use.

Recent legislation to randomly drug test MPs for seemingly political reasons has spilled out to the business community. Talk about Big Brother.

Mr Editor, please consider running a headline in your newspaper along the lines “Pot Smoking College Students BEWARE!” But seriously, this could result in missed economic opportunities if a potential employer finds out that their summer student smokes weed in non-business hours.

If every employee/employer who ever smoked the stuff in their youth got randomly drug tested back then and had a reference to a positive for marijuana use appear on their employment record, it could have haunted them for life, especially in a small island community like ours.

Thank goodness for clean living and righteous people to help steer the way for the majority of us who do not choose to live a life of abstinence, particularly dopey pot head college students.

ANONYMOUS