Health and Social Services Minister the Hon. Quinton Edness proposed mandatory drug testing on Friday as a way of rooting out workplace drug users.

Mr. Edness justified the idea by pointing out that many of the Island's drug users were risking the public's safety when they abused drugs on the job.

"Many of these workers have lives in their hands,'' he said, citing Airport employees, truck and bus drivers and ferry operators.

"We're also going to have to test for drugs at the scene of accidents.'' The Minister said Bermudians must undergo some major "attitudinal changes'' if the problem of drugs and crime was to be stamped out on the Island.

"We have to have every employee, employer and union included in a national drug programme, including testing,'' he said. "An employer or manager should have the right to come in and say (to an employee): `We know you have a problem.' Once the employee admits it, he or she can get the approporiate treatment.'' He added that such measures would constitute the thrust of the National Drug Commission's updated mandate.

"These (measures) are some of the things the NDC is considering and we (in Government) are here to let the public know that these are some of the things we have to accept,'' he said, adding: "We must get at the casual users, who by the way are the most infectious group. Like smoking, we must make it distasteful and lower demand.'' Mr. Edness, who did not provide details on how worker drug testing might eventually be implemented, said that new approaches to lowering crime and eradicating drug abuse would only work if the public was on line.

"We're going to have to look at -- and we are looking at it in Government -- the whole spectrum of factors that contribute to the problem,'' he said. "The question is `Are we as a community ready for that?' because that is what we have to do to lower crime,'' Mr. Edness told the House of Assembly.

Workplace drug testing has been implemented on some US job sites after initial bursts of resistance.

The Hon. Quinton Edness