Stuart Wolfendale

If I was young and living in Tai Po, I would be identified by Narcotics Tsarina  Sally Wong as a drug risk and role models might well be presented to me as alternative ways of life to flying high on a Saturday night- or a Monday afternoon, after 4^th year physics. 

These could include pop idols who streak their hair with cocaine and act as ambassadors against drugs in government campaigns because their agents tell them it will be good for their image. Bundled in could be government officials like Sally or Michael Suen who are less popular than prunes and less popularly appointed than the Pope. The old fashioned might suggest I look to ageing tycoons who pulled themselves up by their plimsoll straps to run jealously guarded monopolies and stiff shareholders. Evangelical Christians who turn Jesus’ message into a government clean-up commercial might be urged upon  me too . The totally deluded might speak of the Heung Yee Kuk.

More immediately, if I was young and living in Tai Po, I might face being pulled out of a line-up in my school and ‘asked’ if I’d be tested for drugs. Only very unpleasant governments pull their citiziens out of line-ups and lay hands on them. So, young and living in Tai Po and looking at all that, I might go out and get high.

In fact, I am old and living in Tai Po but I went out there in Lancashire when I was young and got cider and cheap rum and the sentiment was much the same. If I was young again, stuck in a school labrynth which delivered  me a life totting up other people’s figures or dusting  their computers, in an atmosphere where even my grandparents sat frothing in front stocks screens and ‘K’and ‘E’ were as available as toffees, I’m really not sure if I’d go out all over again or not.

If I were the sort of youth who got a buzz out of minor delinquency as strong as the ‘high’ itself, line up drug testing would deter nothing. It would present just another way for the system to be bucked. Thoughts about self determination and moral responsibility would never make it through the synapses.

Drug taking as a form of rebellion  has a long tradition but sitting in my bath chair in my Tai Po window, what I would prefer to see is senior school kids boycotting classes, walking through the streets chanting slogans against a dim witted and ‘fascist’ government attempting social engineering by messing with their bodies. Something along those lines, over the top and down the other side, would do nicely.

And who, from their recent statements on school drug testing, would be behind them? That global protector of inviolate youth, the Roman Catholic Church. Bring it on, boys and girls!