June 2007
Mexican President Felipe Calderon announced that he would like to implement a program to test thousands of public school students for drugs as part of a stepped up effort against drug trafficking.

The tests would require parental permission, and would be performed in 8,000 public schools initially. He would like to eventually expand the program nationwide.

“It’s not to punish them, but to help them overcome that problem,” Calderon stated at a speech in Monterrey. The program “will be a permanent monitoring of the students’ health so that we are able to detect any addiction and immediately act,” he said.

Parents groups would have to first approve the programs implementation.  Domestic drug use has increased substantially in Mexico over the last few years. However, it still falls far below U.S. drug use, according to government statistics.