T is routine in this country to try and address serious concerns by issuing highfalutin statements that are underpinned at best by nothing more than good intentions certainly not research or concerns of feasibility. In a recent example of such tendencies, we had no less a personage than Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah announce on Monday that it would be made mandatory for students of all public and private institutions to undergo drugdetection tests. This was no off-the-cuff remark; the meeting he was addressing was attended by luminaries that included the provincial education and health ministers among others. Observing that there were some alarming reports about drug abuse from some leading universities, the chief minister constituted a committee to draft a law in this regard.

Mr Shah`s intentions appear to be noble, and the issue without doubt is of serious proportions. However, the details do not seem to have been thought through. First, such a law would violate students` right to privacy, given that it would amount to all of them coming under the unsavoury suspicion of drug abuse many for no reason at all. Second, how would it even be possible to safely, reliably, and without confusion/contamination test millions of young people from Class VI to Intermediate? Drug tests include blood and/or urine sample analyses; unfortunately, this is a country where not only are the safety of syringes and practice of basic hygiene compromised but where medical and laboratory expertise to handle wide-scale testing is also in short supply. The Sindh government has grasped the stick by the wrong end. Slowing drug-abuse rates would more effectively be achieved through shutting down supply lines: from ingredients (ephedrine, to name just one) for local manufacture and/ or processing, to cross-border smuggling (UNODC estimates that Pakistan is the destination and transit country for approximately 40pc of the opiates produced in Afghanistan), to dealers and suppliers.

Drug abuse is too serious a matter to be treated as business as usual.