To me the spirit of the law is more important than the letter.
Also, Barney had a change of heart when, Gomer I think, made a citizens arrest on Barney when he made a u-turn, or something like that.
And how does ruining a childs live by expulsion stomp out drug abuse for future cases? You are such a prude…Read the thread. His girlfriends mother gave him permission to use his inhaler (which she had a script for) in case of an event.
You are saying that by me giving an associeate a tylenol, I will eventually give that person heroin. HA ! What has happened to our school system?
cbm77, follow your own advice and read the thread, particularly the rest of Joel’s contribution. You were responding to sarcasm on his part. He was not defending the policy or the execution of it in this particular instance.
The school seems to think there’s somewhat more to it. I guess we’ll never find out…
But if she was having an asthma attack and he lent her her inhaler - then for fuck’s sake, what is he supposed to do? Isn’t there any provision for laws to relax if it might be necessary to save someone’s life? If you’re being chased by an axe-murderer, can you cross a road diagonally without a crossing or not? If you’re in a war, can you kill the enemy?
To me, the term “school police” sounds as though it would mean uniformed security guards working for the school. But if they can make arrests and charge students with felonies, I guess they would have to be actual cops who are stationed in a school? Has it become common practice to station cops in schools?
But, as Nut Wrench points out, real cops should not be able to arrest students for violations of school rules. They should only be able to make an arrest if the alleged misdeed in question is a violation of an actual law.
If an adult lent an inhaler to another adult in a public place (on the street, in a store, in a mall), and was observed by a cop, would the cop make an arrest? Would it even occur to a normal cop, under normal circumstances, to think of an inhaler as a dangerous drug?
There’s the concept of justifiable homicide, which, if I understand it correctly, means killing someone in defense of another person. Killing someone to defend yourself is self-defence, but if it’s to defend someone else, the term is justifiable homicide
If we can have justifiable homicide, why not justifiable (blank) ? Fill in the blank with whatever normally criminal act is felt to be justified. In this case, it would be something like “justifiable sharing of a dangerous drug” (if the inhaler is actually deemed to constitute a dangerous drug, which I find hard to believe).
If the theorical person fleeing an axe murderer jaywalks, it would be considered “justifiable jaywalking”. If a driver goes though a red light that is broken, and has been stuck on red for hours, it would be considered “justifiable running of a red light”. And so on. Only we don’t normally need to have a formal determination that the act was justified because, in a non-school setting, the authorities apply a concept called common sence. They just ignore the jaywalking or red light running under circumstances as described above.
Have there been cases where someone was harmed by using another person’s inhaler? If so, this would explain the existance of this law. If not, I have to wonder, why pass such a law?
I’m glad the boy isn’t going to jail, but I’m still disgusted. His life and that of his family is disrupted, he has a “record” as far as schools are concerned, and now his home schooling will remove him from the daily association with fellow students.
Boil it all down, you’re still left with school administrators, teachers and nurses who know the law but use no common sense. Their intelligence, if they have any, is ignored in favor of a “one size fits all” law, which removes the need to think. These people are setting a shameful example for the children they are supposed to be preparing for life.
