In my high school, a guy I knew once got so drunk at lunch, that he passed out standing up by the door of the Chemistry classroom, where he’d been asked to go turn off the lights. Of course, he’d been asked to turn off the lights so we could watch a movie, which usually meant the teacher had had a couple at lunch as well, so no biggie.
Also at my high school, you could just about earn a varsity letter in hotboxing in your car. Marijuana was so prevalent — and the drug itself was so tolerated — that the school administrators tried to ban snacks in the hallway. I had some friends who actually grew (small) pot plants in the planters in the school cafeteria.
The problem with zero-tolerance is that they always end up coming down far too harshly on people who don’t deserve it. So if you ban knives on planes, say, you end up having to confiscate nail files. And if you ban drugs at school, well that includes birth control:
“I realize my daughter broke a rule,” the mother said. But in an appeal to the school system, she reasoned, “the punishment does not fit the crime.”
For two decades, many schools have set zero-tolerance policies on drugs. That means no over-the-counter drugs, no prescription drugs, no pretend drugs in student lockers or pockets. When many teens have ready access to medicine cabinets filled with prescription medications such as Xanax and Vicodin, any capsule or tablet is suspect.
Still, some parents and civil rights advocates say enforcement has been overzealous. Stringent rules have ensnared not only drug dealers and abusers, but a host of sniffling and headachy students seeking quick medical relief. The Supreme Court will consider this month the case of a 13-year-old Arizona student who was strip-searched in 2003 by an administrator who suspected that she was carrying ibuprofen pills.
Of course, they can’t actually ban the drugs — it would be perfectly okay for her to have them at school, if she had only handed them over to the school nurse, where they would be locked up until she made a special trip just to take a pill. The student rightly reasoned that that was ridiculous. And, as her mother pointed out, shouldn’t the decision to take contraception be a private one?
“Most people would not know the difference between birth control or some Ritalin or Tylenol or codeine,” said Clarence Jones, coordinator for the Fairfax school system’s safe and drug-free youth program. “If they are just pulling something out of their pockets and sticking it in their mouths, we don’t know what they are taking.”
Oh, no! It could have been Tylenol? Well, of course that justifies expelling her for two weeks!
Grant Hamilton
