I read an article about drug policies in American schools once, now I heared the same on tv, extended to “you can not take prescription drugs in school either or you will be thrown out”
Is that true?
What about psycho meds? (anti depressants, anti psychotics, anti anxiety meds)
What about asthma airosole?
What about diabetes?
Do ppl with those prescriptions get “a green card”
or what?
I mean - if I couldnt take aspirin with me to school I d simply tell them to go fuck themselfs.
And - does that kind of thing exist in the UK too?
yuck… if it does I ll have a problem next school year…
There have been some unfortunate cases of overzealous administrators enforcing zero tolerance laws and busting kids for aspirin, midol and vitamins. When in doubt ask first. I seriously doubt if you’d be prevented from taking prescription meds but you may have to let a school nurse or administrator keep them.
Drug policy in my sons school is that ANY drug (including over the counters) may NOT be carried with the student, they are to be dispensed by and at the school nurse’s office. Prescription meds must be accompanied by dr’s orders (ie the prescription bottle), OTC’s must be accompanied by parental orders/signature.
This DOES include aspirin, vitimins and the like, but does NOT include things like “halls mento cough drops”. ( I asked).
I think (hasn’t happened to me yet) that they make special arrangments for things like asthma inhalers and bee sting kits.
I’m in Maryland. I sent my daughter to school a few years ago with a box of Luden’s Cherry cough drops and the teacher took it away from her and gave it to the nurse. LittleKinsey could only get one by going to the nurse, and I had to go in and pick them up from the nurse at the end of the day. I though it was incredibly stupid, but at least they didn’t expell her on drug charges.
I remember a couple cases here about this, though, usually involving high school age kids, sharing “drugs” like Midol and Tylenol. Usually the sharer is expelled under the zero-tolerance policy.
One case involved a girl having an asthma attack, couldn’t find her inhaler thing, so her friend let her have a hit of her own inhaler and they were both suspended for sharing drugs.
IIRC, most cases like this are dropped, the kids are let back in school, the school board apologizes, but geez, all that trouble over a freaking aspirin?
Does anyone else think that the school system is going absolutely freaking INSANE?
This zero-tolerance stuff is just getting completely out of hand. Poor kids these days must feel like they’re entering a totalitarian state when they go to school these days.
Whatever happened to teaching personal responsibility, and setting examples of good judgement by being fair and understanding? I don’t want my kid growing up in an environment of institutional zero-tolerance.
God forbid if your child should have to take a drug that’s a bit embarrasing, huh? Teenage years are hard enough on kids without forcing them to publically march to the nurse’s office three times a day, announcing to the world with each trip that they are on prescription medication.
When I was a kid, if we were caught giving a pill to someone the teacher might say, “let me see that”. He’d examine the pill, and if it was an aspirin he might ask the recipient why he needed it, then say “Okay. Be careful with even OTC drugs, kids.” That’s it.
And back then, illicit drugs were just as much of a problem as they are today. I don’t see zero tolerance of little Johnny’s aspirin protecting anyone from anything.
If this crap continues, we’re going to raise a generation of paranoid, anti-social misfits.
They have a zero tolerance policy at my brother’s school. No drugs of any kind can be carried by the student. My mother had to fight to get the school to allow him to carry his asthma inhaler. If he is having an asthma attack he needs his inhaler immediately and doesn’t have time to go to the office.
Any other medication, prescription or over-the-counter, must be delivered by a parent to the office. This is a highschool! 17 and 18 year old boys and girls are having to go to the office to ask for a Midol or an Advil.
I am glad that I got out of highschool eight years ago before things got this crazy.
pretty mad.
Especially that they wouldnt even let the kids have their asthma gear without quarreling around first. Are they waiting for the first death or what?!
That’s exactly what it’ll take. Maybe somebody will collapse on the way to the office. Maybe somebody on antipsychotics will act out in class and endanger others. Maybe it will be the child of a Doper. Maybe it will be a Doper. Here’s an idea: Write to legislators, at state and federal levels. We can get these laws written off if we all act annoying enough.
A problem Derleth, is in a lot of cases it is not laws, but an arbitrary school or school board policy. And these policies are remarkably resistant to being changed by the parents of the children going to said schools.
This zero tolerance madness is not just stupid - it’s actually pretty frightening. If this had happened in the 1970’s/1980’s when I grew up, parents would have been marching in the streets, and the entire school board would have been voted out on their asses. Now parents have this strange, sick attitude of “well, maybe it’s dehumanizing, laughably extreme, totalitarian, and potentially deadly (re: asthma and diabetes) but I don’t want to think about those things. All I know is that I want my kids to be safe!”
Yes, Derleth, it will take a death, but it will also take a multi-billion dollar lawsuit to change things. Because the people who typically are on school boards (gross sterotyped generalization here) are idiotic do-nothing hacks who are trying to use the position to springboard to a city or county government post. And from there to glory! :rolleyes:
FWIW, here in Oklahoma they’ve not only refused to let kids have their inhalers (I know someone fighting this battle), but they suspended a kid for carrying mouthwash.
He’d gotten braces and the dentist told him to brush & use mouthwash every time he ate. But mouthwash contains <gasp> alchohol!!!
AND they’re notorious for not backing down here. The parents went in & talked with the school admins and explained that neither they nor the kid understood that ‘zero-tolerance’ extended to mouthwash. They agreed to abide by the policy in the future, but the school refused change the suspension.
I’ve heard several other similar cases - the schools insist on carrying out the penalties even under the most ridiculous circumstances. Their policy is NO EXCUSES ALLOWED WHATSOEVER.
Maybe what’s needed is a kind of “follow-the-policy-to-the-letter” type of approach, where large hordes of students are descending (individually) on the nurse’s office two or three times a day–bury 'em in paperwork so they can’t get anything else done! But don’t expect my kid’s participation–we’re gonna homeschool.
I graduated from a high school in Delaware last year, and one thing that I distinctly remember is the day that I was told to always, always keep my altoids in their box because of their resemblance to drugs. Oy… At my school, kids have been busted for mints, sugar… anything resembling drugs, regardless of what it actually is, can cause suspension.
I wonder if some of these schools will rethink their brilliant :rolleyes: policy when some kid dies or comes close to it from an asthma attack.
So long as my school doesn’t ban breath mints we should be ok…if not, Fridays will be hell(onion day!!). I’m still wondering how long it will be before i get busted for putting the school logo(a revoulutionary minuteman[with gun at side!!]) on my notebook multiple times. I don’t see how they(school board) could do anything since the logo is on the newsletter that students get every friggin week. The logo used to be on assignment books sold in the office, but that has since changed because [start sarcasm here] any student who notices a gun will immediately go on a wild shooting rampage at the school[/sarcasm]
Y’know, this policy is so stupid nobody has even rushed to defend it. It seems even the most dense here see zero-tolerance policies as being braindead. Which reduces the chances of this thread being booted into GD. I predict IMHO, myself, or The Pit if somebody gets truly angry with the stupidity being described here.
‘Zero Tolerance’ is just a way for a school board to cover its ass. If they actually have to use their judgement, then there will be hell to pay if their judgement is wrong. So instead, they institute a robotic procedure that leaves no room for them to have to decide (and stick their necks out).
Of course, this is bad for the kids, but I’ve been too cynical about school boards for too long to think they actually care about the kids.
Sam Stone, you’ve just hit the nail on the head. That’s why zero-tolerance policies came to be, and that’s why they flourish. Sounds like the old Nazi argument: ‘You can’t execute me, I was just following orders!’ Seems odd how that argument always crops up in defense of the worst practices. (I’m not comparing schools with Nazis, I’m comparing Nazis with fucking idiots.)
If you want ridiculous, medicated band-aids was on the list of “drugs” that Fairfax County Public Schools in northern Virginia wouldn’t allow.
To clear something up, if someone needs to take medication in school, they can. They can’t do it as they normally should, however, they need to give it to the school nurse and go to the clinic as they need to take it.
No one gets expelled for having over the counter drugs, but they do get suspened. If I remember correctly, the zero-tolerance policy in my county did mandate an automatic suspension and a reccomendation for expulsion. (Suspended means you can not be on school grounds for a determined number of days; expelled means you are out of the school system entirely.)
And it is extremely ridiculous. In my county, a twelve year old girl was suspended for giving another kid Advil. Advil for crissakes. I can take three Advil and not feel a thing.
Being only two years out of high school, I could rant on and on about the stupidity of the drug and weapon zero-tolerance rules.
