Editorial
Nebraskan
University of Nebraska-Line oln
Mike Reilley, Editor, 472-1766
Jeanne Bourne, Editorial Page Editin'
Jann Nyffeler, Associate News Editor
Scott Harrah, Night News Editor
Joan Rezac, Copy Desk Chief
Linda Hartmann, Wire Editor
Charles Lieurance, Asst. A & E Editor
Tool for power?
Drug testing not answer; concern is
Last week, the Justice
Department announced
it will start mandatory
drug testing of 60,000 employ
ees later this year. That includes
folks at the FBI, the Drug En
forcement Administration, the
Immigration and Naturalization
Service, and the Bureau of Pris
ons.
It sets a frightening prece
dent.
The administrative order
signed by Attorney General
Edwin Meesc III instigates ran
dom testing for any justice-de
partment employee who works
with sensitive internal docu
ments such as those regarding
criminal investigations, intelli
gence and other matters.
Granted, competent minds
must address these topics. But
Americans are subject to more
than enough government inter
vention. Drug testing—manda
tory or otherwise — is a tool for
excessive power and control
over the individual. Once it
becomes accepted practice in
' the federal government, the
ripple effect of drug testing has
the potential to devastate our so
ciety.
Mandatory drug testing of
federal employees is an inva
sion of privacy. But it goes
beyond that.
If an employer can’t tell when
a worker is under the influence
and if drug use doesn ’ t affect job
performance, it simply isn’t any
of the employer’s business.
If you have to test to know if
your workers are taking drugs,
you don’t know them, and the
problem isn’t just substance
abuse. It’s a management flaw
that can’t be corrected by elimi
nating workers just because
they take drugs.
If you see somebody at work
under the influence, you might
overlook it the first time, maybe
with a little friendly banter
about the benefits of Visine. The
second time, you start to won
der. If you care, you’ll take the
time to ask, “What’s going on in
your life? Is there something
you want to talk about?”
The bottom line is concern.
Employers have to value em
ployee well-being over produc
tivity and image.
It’s hard to confront someone
about potential substance abuse.
It’s embarrassing. God help us,
somebody we hired has a prob
lem. We dance around it and
ignore it and hope it’ll go away.
We avoid talking about it be
cause we assume they’ll deny it
anyway.
The government’s goal
seems to be to eliminate workers
who are involved with drugs.
But that only creates unem
ployed Americans who happen
to take drugs. Potential victims
will just leam how to conceal
their drug use.
Americans must leam to con
front the problem of potential
drug abuse. Education and
counseling are essential. Man
agers should be able to identify
the problems and the signs of
drug use and really do some
thing about it.
“We aim to set an example.”
That’s what Meese said about
keeping drug-enforcement offi
cials drug-free.
Examples, however, are best
set by living them.
In 1987, actions still speak
louder than right-wing threats.
Quibbles & bits
Union men’s room entry inaccessible
• A reader brought up an'
interesting point about the
men’s restroom near the bakery
in the Nebraska Union. The
restroom is equipped for handi
capped use, but the entryway
has several turns, making it
almost impossible to guide a
wheelchair through. The Union
Board needs to consider remod
eling the entryway.
• The University of Nc
braska-Lincoln isn’t the only
Big Eight school having prob
lems putting books and periodi
cals in its libraries, according to
National On-Campus Report.
Despite a 7.2 percent increase in
its library budget, the Univer
sity of Kansas will buy fewer
books this year. Kansas buys
I about 40 percent of its publica
lions abroad, mainly in Western
Europe and Japan, and a deval
ued U.S. dollar on the foreign
market has left the school with
less money to spend
• Last week’s “Dum Quote
of the Weak” came from Sports
Illustrated magazine. This
week, we borrow a few lines
from Playboy magazine’s pro
file of Jessica Hahn, who admit
ted to being Jim Bakker’s mis
tress: “If people want to make
fun of me, they can — I don’t
care. I am not living my life for
them anymore. To me, this is a
creation. I am not being im
moral or anything. I am doing
something that says, ‘Jessica is
not a robot. She is not to be used
and thrown out. She is an indi
vidual.’” She reportedly was
paid $ 1 million for the story and
topless photos. The article in
cluded sketches of Bakkcr in his
underwear.
• A recent study by National
On-Campus Report uncovered
some disturbing suicide figures
on Midwestern college cam
puses. In a study of 77 suicides
at 12 universities, researchers
found that college students’
suicides can be traced to three
major causes: lamily difficul
ties. academic concerns and dif
ficulties in relationships. Even
more disturbing was the role of
drugs and alcohol in suicides.
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Heroin would ease pain
Terminally ill also suffer from congressional procrastination
The movement to ease the awful
pain of some deaths from cancer
is showing signs of life. Not
inconceivably, the present Congress
could make the decisive move: to per
mit doctors administering to termi
nally ill patients who have failed to
respond to lesser drugs, to give injec
tions of heroin. It has been a very long
fight, and Mrs. Judith Quattlebaum of
Washington has led it, unflaggingly.
More than 10 years ago, she undertook
to organize a committee to bring to the
attention of Congress, which passes
laws regulating the use of drugs, the
plight of Americans who suffer great
pain of the kind that could be alle
viated by such injections of heroin as
are routinely administered in Great
Britain to those who are certain soon to
die.
What Mrs. Q. keeps running into is:
a) a part of the medical establishment
that against all reasonable evidence
persists in insisting that a combination
of lesser drugs will accomplish the
same pain abatement (there are plenty
of doctors on the other sides, and the
British experience is now long, and
conclusive); and b) more important,
those in Congress who succumb to the
argument that to authorize heroin in
the hospitals would be to flood the
streets with this dangerous drug, aug
menting the incidence of drug ad
diction.
But the data have been carefully
accumulated and the Committee on
the Treatment of Intractable Pain has
in hand data difficult to contend with.
If every milligram of heroin that it is
proposed be legally authorized to hos
pitals tending to cancer patients were
stolen from the hospital safes at 2 p.m.
and made instantly available to street
peddlers of illegal heroin, the result
would be to augment the existing
supply of illegal drugs by between 2
percent and 4 percent. Since there is
little likelihood that 1,000 hospitals
would coordinate the circumstances
for such an operation, more difficult
than the Normandy landing, what we
see is a threat of no consequence.
And then the most important figure
of all. Since 1980, when the committee
came close to winning congressional
approval, 8,000 persons per year have
died of cancer of that excruciatingly
painful variety that might have been
sharply mitigated if only Congress had
acted.
The good news this season has been
the activity of Sen. Daniel Inouye, who
is the principal Senate sponsor of the
heroin bill. He is joined by a number of
William F.
Buckley Jr.
_
senators across the idelogical spec
trum. Sen. Dennis DeConcini has been
very active. Add senators John Melcher,
Quentin Burdick, Ted Stevens, Thad
Cochrane, Donald Riegle, Carl Levin,
John Warner, Nancy Kassebaum, James
McClure, Patrick Leahy — and, most
recently, Robert Dole.
The principal opponent of the mea
sure is Congressman Charles Rangel of
Harlem, a man of great charm and per
suasion who is, however, a fundamen
talist on the drug problem. If heroin is
bad, Mr. Rangel reasons, then why
would Congress authorize its use? Well,
Congress authorizes the use of napalm,
and every day in every hospital, tools
—and drugs — are used that, misused,
would cause trouble, sometimes death.
But Mr. Rangel does not own Congress,
and much turns on the position taken,
as yet unstated, by the president. And
on this particular issue, much turns on
the attitude of the first lady, the
nation’s most adamant and conspicu
ous opponent of drug abuse. But Mrs.
Reagan, daughter of a distinguished
doctor and daughter of an ailing mother,
knows the difference between heroin
used by a healthy street delinquent
and heroin administered by doctors,
one of whose mandates is to ease pain.
Sen. Edward Kennedy, as chairman
of the Committee on Labor and Human
Resources, presides over that commit
tee that normally would hear testimony
for and against the proposed measure.
He has told his colleagues that he is too
busy to undertake to examine the pro
posed bill during this session. But con
gressional tradition holds that at least
one committee of Congress should hear
testimony; and back in 1984, the House
Subcommittee on Health and the
Environment — which reports to the
Committee on Energy and Commerce
— heard such testimony. It would be
altogether conventional for the Senate
to waive its own hearings, accept those
of the other house and move directly to
a vote on the floor.
Sen. Kennedy, who often speaks of
the unnecessary cruelties of life, ought
to react to the principal problem before
the house, which is: Every day’s delay
means 25 deaths in unnecessary pain.
The whole of Congress should be alerted
to this point. It is responsible to pass
the bill — or to vote it down. What is
not responsible is simply to dither
away another month, year, decade, let
ting the agony of the hopeless subsid
ize congressional torpor.
Copyright 1987
Universal Prew Syndicate
Letter
Reader: U.S. women should focus less on feminist issues
In response to Jeanne Bourne s
editorial (Daily Nebraskan, Sept.
30), I believe she has a somewhat
tilted perspective in her analysis of
the current slate of affairs of today’s
women. An adjusted perspective
would be:
• Sexual harassment or discrimi
nation — what would Bourne think
about a man opening a door for her?
• The use of the term “wrong” in
reference to a university operator
saying, “You’re in luck, he’s single”
or “Ooh, nice legs' is reactionary.
Further, it is a typical response from
someone looking for offense, cl is
playing gender paranoia, ll may be
called uncoulh for instance. “Wrong”
is ultra-relative as well as prescriptive
in a moral sense. This is not the best
issue to imply wrongdoing.
• Remember the more important
issues that need attention, especially
from bright, young and ambitious
minds. Problems in America as well
as around the world need lorum and
creative solutions. Try to focus on
these, not on nitpicky militant femi
nist issues that are orders of magni
tude, less in importance.
• Once in a while, remember how
proud you should be to be an Ameri
can woman. How many advantages
and rewards you have access to. How
could you work on bringing these to
other women of the world, c.g. South
Africa and on and on. Most of all,
relax and don’t have your feelings
sticking out wailing to gel stepped on.
Be a woman respected by men and
women alike because you’ve worked
on solutions to problems that are
really important. Then the next lime
some man on the street yells, “Nice
legs,” your “I’m offended” meter
won’t jump off ihe scale.
Donn Gray
biology/philosophy
senior