European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - August 25, 1986, Darmstadt, Hesse Page 10 columns the stars and stripes monday August 25,1986 Tom Wicker drug testing would be costly and ineffective the department of Justice ii pushing the White House to order narcotics testing for More than half of All the government s civilian employees about 1.5 million people most of them innocent of an connection with illicit drugs. This is the most grandiose manifestation of the drug hysteria a condition brought on partly by the recent discovery thai a cheap form of cocaine willed crack is in wide use partly by an epidemic of High Pilch press reports on this and other drug mailers and nol least by politics. Police in new York the other Day raided More than 200 stores and confiscated under an obscure Public health Law about 39,000 pipes of the kind often used for smoking crack. These things usually happen around election time a store owner remarked with an Eye to Newyork s sept. 9 primary. Yes and so do predictable events like gov Mariom. Cuomo s Call Tor harsher penalties up to life imprisonment for crack dealer. Nelson Rockefeller wouldst thou Wen alive to see that the More things change the More they stay the same on capita Hill House democrats Are readying their own anti drug program to be passed before the november elections. Downtown president Reagan has submitted to a urine analysis the Belling is that detested negatively for crack smoking. Attorney general Edwin Meese is pushing his proposal for testing All government workers who have Access to classified material. If nothing else this lends new support to those who have argued for years with no More effect than a Leaf falling on the White House Lawn that too Man people Are authorized both to classify documents and to have Access to he material so stamped. What kind of secrets Are those that 1.5 million people can share but that s another Story. Meuse s proposition about which intr while House appears properly cautious would be Loo controversial too costly Loo ineffective and unfair. It would be too Likely to Cost government employees who May need help of which nol enough is available even now their jobs. Clearly such a widespread dragnet Check on in innocent and the guilty alike would raise a storm of protests and properly so from those to be tested and from those declining numbers of american who still think civil liberties Are Worth maintaining. As for costs an enlightening article in the new York times by Toby Cohen formerly a project director for the new York state Assembly s medical practice taskforce estimated i a i urine tests for drugs Cost from Anthony Lewis and now the results of the presidents 115 to $250 apiece depending on the accuracy de that Range alone suggests How misleading and ineffective such testing can be. Would you Radii or lose your Job because of a Al 5 or a $250 test which is your employer including Uncle Sam. Most Likely to provide but assuming a mid Range Price for the Mcnese test of$120 per paper cup simple arithmetic provides a one time Cost of $180 million. Impose the meet lest on 1,1 million government employees three times a year surely not Loo often to keep the bureaucracy clean and we Are up to $540 million the first year and not getting copy of the line tests at thai. Random sampling thai s not the Meese Way an besides As Cohen pointed out if you tested fewer peo ple per round you d have to have More rounds and might save very Little Money. Drug tests on the one hand Are not always accurate or effective. But anyone who refused to be tested or even argued against it would come under suspicion of having something to hide. Anyone who tested positively even though he or she might never have ingested anything stronger than aspirin would have a hard Tim proving innocence which americans Aren t sup posed to have to do anyway. On the other hand drug tests can be evaded or toiled which is Why each provision of a Sample would have to be closely observed and verified raising further invasion of privacy question. For whatever deterrent effect the Mcnese tests might have these costs and not just those payable in dollars seem far too High. Besides 85 percent of the Federal anti drug Bud get now goes to Law enforcement which is up by 70 percent while spending for prevention and rehabilitation has dropped by 5 percent in the Reagan years. Int it about time some real Federal Money at least As much As the Meese tests would Cost was invested in research on Why so Many americans want to use illicit drugs and on educating them about to e consequences c new Voth turn extra Lego threats attempt to silence the press the British political system has always made a fetish of secrecy. A collection of Laws controls what May be published about official business. But connoisseurs of the British obsession with secrets now have a new twist a new extremity to enjoy. The courts have just held that judges May forbid newspapers to reprint Al ready published information about the government. Judges May do so eve when what they suppress is a charge of official wrongdoing or criminality. Judges May do so although parliament has not passed a statute laying Down this particular method of silencing the press Margaret Thatcher s government sought those remarkable rulings from the courts and Goi them after two National newspaper published stories Aboul Peler Wight a retired senior officer of Ali the British Security serv ice. Wright has Wrilen his memoirs she his memories of the service Are not ail glorious. Among other things Wright s Manu script is said to Date How mis planted microphones in the London embassies of Friendly countries and bugged Lan Caster humic the site of diplomatic conferences including the 1979 con Ference that agreed on majority Rule and Independence for Zimbabwe. It also reportedly bugged Nikita Khrushchev s hotel suite when he visited Lon Don in 1956. Those bits of the manuscript were reported in connection with a court hearing in Australia. Wright lives there in retirement and an australian pub Lisher has taken Bis Book. But the Brit ish government got wind of it and asked the australian courts 10 Slop publication. A judge issued a temporary restraining order pending a trial later this year. In june the observer and the guardian printed articles about Wrigh tand the australian court Case mention ing the alleged bugging. They we remodel articles on an inside Page and the charges they related aroused no sensation. But the government reacted As if the nation were threatened. It went urgently to court. Interestingly the govern men did not invoke Britain s sweeping Crim Inal Law against disclosure of official information the official secret act that statute has come under heavy criticism and a jury recently acquitted a civil servant who did publish official information but said As Peter Wright says that his purpose was to disclose wrongdoing. Instead the government asked the courts to apply a Branch of judge made common Law unique to Britain that is known As the Law of Confidence. It was traditionally used to keep people from violating confidences in commercial an personal relations. Then 10 years ago the government invoked it to try to Stop publication of the diaries kept by the late Richard Grossman while lie was a Mem Ber of the British Cabinet Starling in\964. The lord chief Justice then lord Widgery said the Law of Confidence could be used in a civil suit to Stop Dis closure of official information. But he said the Burden was an the government to prove that the material was truly confidential and to show that a particular restraint was necessary. Widgery found that the government had not met those burdens and the Crossman publication went ahead. This time the courts brushed aside Widgery s cautions. The government was not asked to prove that the information was new or damaging. Its simple claim that National Security was involved persuaded a judge to enjoin the guardian and the observer from reprinting what they had reported and to warn All papers off similar stories. On Appeal the newspapers argued that there was a High Public interest in disclosing official wrongs and crimes. The court of Appeal saw yes there was but disclosure must be to the authorities not to the Public. It Wai As if the newspapers that investigated watergate had been ordered not to publish their finding but to bring them to attorney general John decision expressed in extreme form the elitist British View that official business is for officials not for the pub Lic. British editors have been saying with a sigh that it could not happen in Ameri Ca but is that True i wonder. There is a presumption against prior restraint in american Law yes. But there too the courts have taken to rubber stamping executive National Security claims and stretching the Law to fit and a director of Central intelligence uses extralegal threats to silence the press. Vej new firt to fowl
