Georgia: Officials Face Mandatory Drug Tests

The Georgian parliament is considering a proposal to make drug tests a mandatory condition for getting or keeping a job within the public sector.

The bill's main sponsor, parliamentarian Dimitri Lordkipandze of the Powerful Georgia faction, told Imedi television on March 11 that the measure would require a hair test instead of the urinalysis that has been taken by officials before. "Testing hair samples is more reliable and drugs can be traced back for longer periods," Lordkipanidze said.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has embraced the idea, saying that all of Georgia's roughly 100,000 public employees should take the test. "[I] will be the first one to provide my hair sample," Saakashvili said in televised comments on March 6.

Exact statistics about the extent of Georgia's drug problem were not immediately available, but health organizations have previously identified drug abuse as a massive concern for the poverty-stricken country. Discarded syringes can often be seen on the streets of the capital, Tbilisi, and some 6,000 people are now serving sentences in Georgian prisons for drug dealing.