Older asthma inhalers usually have a stimulant medication in them. I think Albuterol was the big one. When I’ve had to use one, it leaves me jumpy and jittery for hours afterward, and my fine motor skills went to hell. So, I suppose, if you like that sort of thing, that’s the sort of thing you like.
I’m stunned to find out Canadians are this stupid. This kind of stupidity is usually American.
Indeed. But I assumed it was because Straffordville is just across the lake from the US. And who knows what the tide brings in, eh?
Well, the closest big city is London, and we all know what gits the Brits are.
What a tragedy. Those poor parents. What a dumb fucking principal. You have a kid that comes to school with a device that he might need to save his life and you LOCK it up?!! As some have intimated, this is just the sort of thing I would have expected to happen in the U.S., with all the zero-tolerance stupidity going on in our schools.
I must say this…
even prisoners in the United States get access to their inhalers for asthma…
That is all…
But, man, y’know, *DRUGS!!!*® And it’s not so much that he may need it, but that someone else in the class may, and then he’d let the other kid have it! Then kids will be bringing inhalers actually charged with *DRUGS!!!*® and making up attacks and passing around inhalers and it will be *DRUGS!!!*® in them! You must never let kids think it’s OK to take from or give to someone *DRUGS!!!*® Think Of The Children!!
(Meanwhile the kids can reasonably score pot, crack, coke, smack, mollies, downers, uppers, cough syrup, roofies, acid, dust, meth, salts, etc. in every town and village, why would they bother with clever schemes to bring it disguised to the school?)
School policy was to keep the inhalers under lock and key and staff repeatedly confiscated spare inhalers from Ryan, added Gibbons.
“I received many a phone call stating Ryan had taken an inhaler to school and they found it in his bag and would like me to come pick it up because he wasn’t even allowed to bring it home with him,”
"Madam, there are three solutions for this:
1–give my son the inhaler
2–I come get it. My time is $75 per hour or fraction thereof, and 56.5 cents per mile.
3–I swear out a theft complaint with the police, naming you personally.
Your choice."
Primatene Mist (epinephrine) was sold over the counter in the US up to Dec. 2011. A different form (Asthmanefrin) is sold over the counter today.
Honest question here - why didn’t you parents stop this policy, instead of just trying an end-run?
Nanny provinces.
Provinces de nounou.
so, no one is going to be criminally liable for actively preventing timely access to life saving medication?
We did both. Or tried to. There was a national effort about ten years ago to bring awareness to the problem, and grant students the legal right to carry their inhalers and epi pens. This was very successful. Then it was a matter of getting schools to comply with the laws. This was…moderately successful.
A school will allow the practice with doctors’ and parents’ written permission, the proper forms, waiver of liability, a copy of the current prescription on file, etc. Whatever eases the minds of the administrators.
I did that one year. And never really gave a shit whether everyone was happy with the situation or not, so maybe I’m not the best person to ask…but I was seeing what I thought was a grudging and half-assed compliance with a new law and reluctance to see the problem, with maybe a little “thanks for all the extra paperwork” thrown in. These people stood between my daughter and her rescue inhaler, and frankly it scared me. I just wanted it to be within her reach at all times. And so it was.
I used and still use Primatene Mist for asthma, it is an epinephrine inhaler. It is less euphoric as a stimulant than coffee, if you were to take multiple puffs way more than needed for an attack you’d have a racing heart and cold sweat, feel like you had just had a gun pointed at your head or something. I can’t see anyone doing it for kicks.
Heck, I can get all that from downing a double shot of Wild Turkey. And* lots* of people do that for kicks…
I don’t have kids, but I can’t even imagine what I’d do if they went to a school with this policy. Not in Ontario, but I’ve emailed their MP to say g’luck, and my MP to check if this crap is happening here.
I do have kids, and speaking also of how my parents would have handled at the same time.
- Screw the rule - if my kid potentially needs a medication so urgently, they are going to be carrying it on them - “legal” or not
- I will fill out a single “permission slip”, or copy the prescription, or give a single doctors letter for an academic year to be allowed to carry - but screw multiple forms, and jumping through hoops - if the medicine is abused, I will deal with the fallout. And what I’m willing to do will get less as the kid gets older.
The theme of this thread suggests to me that there are countless Canadian school administrators who, like their American countertparts, don’t know their rear ends from their elbows. :mad:
This particular post puts me in mind of the time I worked in a seafood restaurant that used cooking sherry. I asked a cook, “Could you get drunk on that?” He said, “You’d probably get* sick* first–from drinking so much liquid.”
I’ve had asthma all my life. Now it’s under very good control with a steroid inhaler. When I was a kid it was pretty severe and I always carried an isoproterenol inhaler. Fortunately in those days there were no such sadistic school rules.
Personally, I’d like to see all the people responsible for this death garroted slowly to the point of unconsciousness so they know EXACTLY how that kid died. Then after they revived I’d repeat the process (again, just to unconsciousness, not to death, although that’s very tempting) so they knew exactly what was coming.
Blind, inhuman adherence to rules. Willing to sacrifice others’ lives to uphold their own principles.
Evil, sadistic bastards.