Editorial: Drug users still need our help

A close friend who works in adult education has told me many times of her frustration with student drug use.

On the other hand, she has often told me how her heart bleeds for her charges. The circumstances they have faced in their life being a reasonable explanation for their inability to get their lives on track.

She talks about sexual abuse, being surrounded by drug and alcohol use, and included in it from ages as young as 10, poor nutrition and no fixed abode.

That said, she says something has to change. Her course is supposed to give them qualifications, make them work-ready. Yet she has often told me about giving up on her Friday drive-around to collect her students for class because they won't turn up.

She is fully aware that success will be limited. And in many instances that will be because of drug use.

Now the National-led Government has come out with a warning to job seekers who don't take or fail a drugs test, that they face losing their benefit from mid-2013. It is the government delivering on a pre-election promise.

Currently there are no consequences for drug-takers who opt out of job applications when faced with a drug test, they say.

Social Development Minister Paula Bennett said the finer details were still being finalised, but it is expected to affect the job seeker category made up of 135,000 beneficiaries "who the Government expected to be able to work, unless they had serious illness or injury".

Many will applaud the hard-line stance, and it is only right that employers expect their employees to be sober.

But I'm not so sure about the immediate loss of a benefit at this first stage. It smacks of punishing the symptom rather than treating the cause, and will just broaden the growing underclass in this country. With no support where will they turn for money? Crime, I would expect. And from there the consequences widen throughout the whole community.

It's been indicated that even those who take a drug test and fail will face sanctions.

Hopefully that will mean they will be forced into rehabilitation, with education, drug counselling and support services provided by the health system. And within a time frame they will be expected to front, clean and sober for further work opportunities.

For this is more than just a welfare issue.

It also involves crime and, therefore, the police. It is imperative that an even greater effort is made to cut off the supply of drugs which, according to my friend, are completely normalised in her students' circles.

The Government could stand accused of cutting costs in the short term, should it not take a holistic approach, be seen to address the many issues involved in and surrounding drug taking. The strength of proposed alcohol law reforms to come before Parliament soon will be an early test of their resolve to change the culture of abuse amongst youth.

There is no doubt some beneficiaries need to be dragged kicking and screaming into the real world. Those who won't take drug tests, won't sort themselves out, deserve to be skating on thin ice.

But for many of those who make the effort to apply for a job, often from a place of low self-esteem, it is a massive step forward. It would be a shame to consign them to the scrapheap.