Football Association national team drug testing scandal. Here he defends his views and explains why he feels the Bermuda Council for Drug-Free Sport's policy is flawed.

When the National Drug Strategy was published in 1991, an approach for confronting the harm caused by the abuse of drugs was embraced by Bermuda.

Politicians of all stripes, businessmen and women, and community leaders shared the collective vision that if we came together as a community the problems associated with substance abuse could be minimised significantly.

Two key principles shaped this vision: a focus on harm reduction and a move away from the preoccupation with punitive measures to confront social problems. Two years later the call for less punitive measures was endorsed by the Tumin Report on the Criminal Justice System; this report, too, was embraced by the community.

Adoption of these principles in the battle against drug abuse has not been because anyone is "soft'' on drugs or condones the abuse of any substance.

Rather this adoption is rooted in a substantial body of research which strongly suggests that harsh measures and scare tactics -- supply control techniques -- have little impact in reducing substance abuse.

Bermuda has a serious drug problem and the community wants it addressed.

Numerous polls conducted locally place "drugs and crime'' as the most important problem to deal with. We know that alcohol is the drug abused more than any other drug on the island: it accounts many of the accidents on our roads, lower worker productivity, is a factor in many domestic violence incidents, and so on. We know that heroin and crack/cocaine addicts unable to fund their habit resort to house break-ins, hand-bag thefts, street prostitution and violence in their desperate attempts to scrape together the money for that next fix. These problems fuel the call for action to be taken.

One area where action has been initiated is the controversial arena of sports.

The Bermuda Council for Drug-Free Sport (BCDS) has come up with a policy which renders anyone involved in an organised sport liable for drug testing. The plan calls for a maximum of 10 percent of sports persons -- across the sporting bodies -- to be tested in a twelve month period. They argue that all drug use classes and methods banned by the International Olympic Committee will be tested for in Bermuda. Anyone testing positive will be suspended and instructed to enter counselling. Testing negative is a pre-condition for re-entering the sport.

The impetus for this policy merits discussion. Some years ago a number of Bermudian football players were caught attempting to import marijuana into the United States. This embarrassing incident for the island prompted the Government to call for drug testing of all players at the international level.

But drug testing athletes can never be a means of identifying drug traffickers.

What we see from this, however, is the genesis of a policy in Bermuda quite different than the norm internationally. Drug testing has become a part of international sports because there is a desire to ensure players compete on a level playing field, without the use of performance enhancing drugs and concern for athletes' health. In the words of the IOC, there is "respect for the ethical concepts implicit in fair play, the Olympic Spirit and medical practice and to safeguard the health of the athletes''.

Nowhere has the BCDS highlighted that their primary concern is for performance enhancing drugs and the discussions have largely revolved around three illicit drugs: marijuana, heroin and cocaine. One prominent sports official has even revealed to me that testing is only undertaken for these three drugs. If this is true, the entire initiative becomes suspect and should be halted immediately. It would run contrary to the BCDS's own policy about the drugs to test for and reek of suspect motives.

While it is entirely appropriate to test players for substances banned by their respective international governing bodies when they are set to compete at the international level it is ludicrous to extend that to all persons in organised sport. The BCDS is wrong to test sports persons who are not competing at an international level. For many it is a weekend activity done for enjoyment and to continue with this policy will only decimate certain sports.

To argue that recreational sports players should not be tested is not meant to encourage the abuse of any drug. Anyone who smokes anything is putting their health at risk; and any use of heroin or cocaine is quite simply foolhardy. Of course sports should be clean of any and all substance abuse, but so too should our schools, businesses, churches and communities in general. Random drug testing the entire community would no more solve the drug problem than testing sports players. All it would do is identify persons -- despite secrecy provisions -- and marginalise them. And if these numbers reach a critical mass, we will have another set of social problems on our hands. To combat this problem we need sustained, coordinated efforts by the Bermuda Police Service, Customs, the National Drug Commission and the Council Partners Charitable Trust. Each has an important role to play in fashioning a community approach.

Sports Minister Dennis Lister is a capable member of Cabinet who has great passion for Bermuda sports and is dedicated to improving its status on the island. He has, however, been badly advised on this specific issue and it needs to be remedied.

DRUGS DGS