I personally have avoided any run-ins with the cops involving drugs, but like most everyone, I have many friends who haven't been so lucky. The most horrible instance happened to my best friend in high school. It was freshmen year and she was 15. She was incredibly smart and talented, involved with the school orchestra and theatre. Maybe it was because she was so smart and artsy that she had a fascination for mind-altering substances. She was given E from so older kids. Another one of my friends heard this was going on, got worried, and told the school administration. When the cops found the pills in her locker, she freaked out and told them they werent hers, that she was just holding onto them for someone else. This of course landed her in much more trouble because she got charged for distribution instead of just possession.
You never really know what the law states for these situations unless it happens to you or someone you know. As it turns out, she was suspended for the rest of the year. At the time she was told that the school was possibly going to expell her. Not only this, but the incident would be on her permenant record. What is truly unnerving is that NO OTHER SCHOOL IN THE STATE WAS REQUIRED TO EXCEPT HER. An honor student was loosing her right to an education for a mistake she had made at age 15. Even a murderer or a rapist never looses their right to an education.
As it turned out, the school did allow her to come back the next school year. Everyone knew what happened. Parents didn't want their kids to see her. Teachers already knew her reputation before she stepped into their classroom. Other students looked down on her. She only lasted another year there before she dropped out and finished her degree at a community college.
I guess what this whole situation really made me realize is how much I disagree with our society's values. The rest of high school I couldn't believe that the assholes, rascists, bullies, and absolute slackers that I went to school with with were here, while she was weeded out. And she was kicked out not even by the law, although she could have been, but by the discrimination and prejudices of the students and teachers.

Thanks Julia. That story happens everyday to students. Our drug policies are doing more harm than good to young people.

This is the zero-tolerance mentality: If drug use/experimentation isn't ruining your life: we will do it for you. Its amazing how teachers and authority figures are willing to shun students suspected of drug use. Zero tolerance policies promote that we isolate those that very well may need our help the most.

What we really need to look at is: what difference do these actions and policies make? Is ecstacy any harder to find, buy, or use? No. But a 15 year old student is having her education taken away for her first offense that harmed no one else.

If we want to see young people succeed we should not be removing education from their lives -- this is counterproductive.

www.schoolsnotprisons.com