The illogical unending need for mandatory drug testing
By Pioneer Publication | posted 03/08/2024
It’s been a week since the hellish ordeal we have experienced during the first round of the enrollment season.
Usually, it has been a struggle for Palawan SUan enrollees especially when registering every semester’s end — the fact that they had to endure long lines of admission and other enrolling processes such as the mandatory drug testing give everyone a headache.
The problems encountered during the enrollment however, has been merely normalized, but the fact that Palawan SUans have to undergo mandatory drug testing every semester, should not be.
Nevertheless, the Publication knows about the need of such drug testing procedures. In the memorandum released by the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) named CMO No 18 series of 2018, with the subject “The Implementing Guidelines for the Conduct of Drug Testing of Students in All Higher Education Institutions,” which coincided with the drug war during the Duterte administration, it sought the need of “drug-free” campuses by eradicating the proliferation of narcotics usage inside all higher education institutions (HEIs), as also mandatorily inscribed in the student’s handbook of the respective HEIs.
During the mandatory drug testing procedures, the examiner of samples obtained from the requesting student-enrollees, in the form of urine and other parts of the body, must be accredited by the Department of Health (DOH) in doing so. Also, the memorandum reads that the student-enrollees will shoulder the expenses in drug testing “prior to admission.”
The Publication understands the need of the University for a “drug-free” campus. However, the reality is that it is the students who will bear the brunt for mandatory drug testing imposed every semester. Is it really necessary for student-enrollees to queue up for drug test results every semester?
It is also printed in every drug test receipts issued by the accredited drug testing centers that the results are good for a year. However, the University does not seem to recognize the validity of such. With this being said, is it also not possible for the University to impose mandatory drug testing before the start of the first semester of the academic year?
Otherwise, in lieu of imposing mandatory drug tests for old students, this article also recommends that it should be done only to the new students and those who are transferring in.
To keep the long words short, and to clear out suspicions that this Publication supports the adversary, Pioneer is and will never oppose the mandatory drug test procedure, as its intention is for the betterment of the campus and the University as a whole, but the need of doing so by the students every semester? It surely is illogical.
