Alright Dave, please explain this comment from FisherQueen for me then.
" I am appalled at the people in here who don’t see a problem with this. "
And you call ME the moron. Nice try fido.
Erek
Wellll. I don’t speak for FisherQueen…but she(?) could be referring to comments like
“If someone did that to me when I went to school, I would thank them.” from Rye
Whaddya think? Sounds like Rye is not taking it to seriously…whether Rye thinks the student did something criminal is anybodies’ guess.
MsWas decides that it is best to move away from the Moron side when Beagledave makes his bold move into their territory.
Our refugee makes his decision and leaves the moron side, but still fearful as he knows his enemy ferrous lurks on the other side, where shall he go, what shall he do? Tune in, next 12 minutes… dun dun dun
Erek
To be fair, the is Santa Cruz.
Santa Cruz is a little different. People sell pot openly. Sometimes they just cruise down the street stopping at all the bus stops to sell their wares. It’s kind of quaint. Nestled between the high end clothing stores and organic restraunts downtown is the…er…“Compassion Flower Inn”, the only inn dedicated to the devil weed. In a recent documentary I saw about pot in Santa Cruz, the police admitted that they didn’t really care about enforceing anti-marijuana laws and invited the feds to come down and do it for them if it was that important to them.
I could see where a kid would see putting pot in brownies would not be a grave offense. There are very few taboos against pot in these parts.
Another “Only in Santa Cruz” story…made me laugh! Santa Cruz is a silly, silly place.
I dunno man, I’ve been hearing this story throughout my life. It’s not all that novel.
Erek
It was a joke, I don’t care if someone slips me marijuana, but I don’t think its right to give anyone ANY type of drug without their consent. Still I don’t think he should be tried as an adult, maybe give him a drug that causes really nasty symtomns and see how he feels…
I think it’s an equally valid point that charging a fourteen-year-old as an adult will very likely not accomplish anything. Do you think he should go to a state prison?
And I’m a little confused as to the reaction to mswas’s first comment. Are you guys eating laced brownies yourself, or did you just not read it? He said he thought it would have been a cool trick WHEN HE WAS A KID. Every teenager on earth thinks marijuana is funny and would laugh at the idea of slipping some to their teacher. That’s why kids are stupid and adults are smarter, and why we make kids go to school and don’t let them vote. Doesn’t make it right, and most kids would have the brains to not actually do it, but kids would still think it hilarious, and every person in this thread would have laughed like hell at the story when they were 14.
mswas then suggested that it was not necessary to try the kid as an adult, which makes perfect sense to me - he’s 14, for Christ’s sake, and will get in appropriate hot water in juvenile court. But maybe there’s a growing movement for the execution of children or something. Somehow these entirely true and reasonable statements by mswas have not only earned the blistering and entirely irrational ire of the thread, but have also elicited some of the worst straw man idiocy I’ve ever seen on the SDMB, like “You don’t find anything wrong with this?” which he didn’t say and “you think it’s okay to drug strangers,” which of course he didn’t say, but God forbid we allow facts, truth and reading comprehension to get in the way of a good anti-drug hysterics festival.
Jesus, guys, get down off Nancy Reagan’s pedestal. Or read his fucking post, at least.
Wow, what a divisive topic.
IMHO, the victims and their parents have the right to be pissed as hell. What the kid did was grossly moronic. Someone could have been hurt (allergies to marijuana, however, are generally of the “makes your eyes and nose water” type; I read one case report on medline describing a more serious reaction (anaphylactoid) following IV injection of crushed leaves and water-can you say dumbass? Still, the driver could have been unwittingly intoxicated). Nevertheless, I don’t believe hurting others was this mentally-challenged youth’s intent. And furthemore, from the description, it seems very unlikely that anyone would have been hurt (even if the driver had eaten a brownie, marijuana intoxication is gradual by the oral route; the driver would have realized something was a bit off long before suffering any serious impairment).
So please, Santa Cruz school district, suspend this kid-expell him even. And victims, if you believe you’ve suffered injury, sue the kid and his parents. But try the kid as an adult?? Back the fuck off!
CartoonU, I couldn’t tell if you were saying that you believe the kid should be tried as an adult or that assault is an adult crime. Anyhow, my take on mswas, and PosterChild is that neither believe this imbecile’s action were cool. Simply, they, like myself, add a dollop of compassion where you choose to pour on the bile.
my personal thc allergic reaction?
it starts with a severe headache that approaches migrane strength.
then I puke my brains out.
then after Im done vomiting all over the place I start to feel stoned.
needless to say I would NOT have found this humorous at all.
oh yeah that just from being in a room with people smokin pot. I have no Idea what would happen if I ATE the stuff.
but hes not an adult, scare the living shit out of him, but prison will only insure that he never ends up as a productive member of society.
prison=shower=molestation
A former co-worker also had terrible headaches, and threw up after trying pot for the first time. This is simply not something you want to foist on someone unawares.
Whether or not this kid is tried as an adult, I don’t know. But he deserves to be expelled. He deserves a serious penalty. I mean, give me a freakin’ break. I remember how stupid I was at age 14. It never would have OCCURRED to me to try to pull off something like this. I would have known that it would have gotten me into deep shit. This kid is a royal shithead. A lot of 14 year olds do seriously horrible and shitty things. Just because they are young doesn’t make them exempt from being shitheads.
Sorry, but Monty this really isn’t assault, it was a prank. It’s also a pretty good example of the sort of thing kids scheme up all the time:
“hey, wouldn’t it be cool if somebody (insert daft idea lifted from Animal House/Road Trip/American Pie) on a school trip”
I’d lay fairly good money that he didn’t plan it singlehanded, or that other kids weren’t in on it. Remember what 14 was like? Remember how dumb you could be, especially if a couple of friends, or worse people you wanted to have as friends, told you you were too chickenshit to try something? Am I really the only person who used to wind up his friends into dumb ideas, or get pushed into them myself?
Fuck me, am I the only one who was a kid when he was 14? Kids fuck up. Punish then when they do, but punish them as kids.
[sub]Oh, and Chas - meet the kid who did bake cookies au ExLax, did manage to plant them on a buffet table at a school function, and did get away with it, whilst basking in the glory of being a school legend for, ooh, a whole two weeks until something else happened.[/sub]
Oh sure. Call it a “prank” and it’s OK. :rolleyes: Setting a cat’s tail on fire, that’s a prank as well! Oh! It’s OK, a kid did it, it’s just a “prank”, right? Phooey.
I know kids do stupid things. But this stupid thing could have had serious consequences. It’s not funny. Maybe the kid didn’t think it through, and didn’t realize it could have dire consequences. I’m sure some kids who set cat’s tails on fire don’t think it through either. But they’re still little shitheads in my book.
I don’t think he needs to be tried as an adult, but he does need to be punished. I’m all for drug legalization, used to smoke pot on a daily basis (and will again when I find out what my dealer’s new number is or get a new connection), but you just don’t drug someone without their knowing it. Pot’s pretty harmless physically (unless of course you have an allergy) but it can have some pretty strong psychological effects if you haven’t built up a tolerance, I’ve known people who freaked out and got very paranoid on it and they KNEW THEY WERE HIGH - imagine if they had no idea they were under the influence? There is also the fact this guy could have seriously screwed up some people’s lives - like it or not, the stuff is illegal - what if one of the kids he gave it to was on probation for something else and had to submit to drug tests on a regular basis? If nobody figured out the brownies had pot in them, somebody could have got in serious trouble.
Y_B, do you notice even the slightest difference between spiking someone’s cookies, and setting an animal on fire?
I mean it’s possible you don’t, and that’s fair enough. We’ve all got out own sliding scale of crime, so to you they could be just as bad as each other. But to me, I’d say it’s about two hundred miles apart. When you set an animal on fire, it’s hard to argue that you’re not deliberately trying to maim and harm an animal.
Compare this to a kid putting some hash in the cookies. If he was actually trying to maim or hurt anyone, why didn’t he use something a lot worse than hash - rat poison, for example. Sure, his use of hash could conceivably have led to people getting hurt, but the thing about pranks is that they tend to be ill conceived, without considering the potential for how badly things can go wrong. Anyone here use cherry bombs? Throw a snow ball at a window? Get into a fight at school? All of those things could really have gone wrong. I did them all, got punished for all of them. I didn’t get charged with assault in an adult court though. I got punished as a dumb kid who needed that punisment to help him realise that actions may have consequences other than those you thought of.
So I’d call the hash cookies a prank, and I’d still look to punish the kid for doing something so dumb - what’s the regs in the US for community service for kids? Twenty or forty weekends spent cleaning up public toilets or scrubbing grafitti of walls should provide a fairly decent amount of time to reflect on how some things are just wrong.
One last thing. I can’t help but suggest that people who use the rolleyes should look at improving their writing skills to the point where they can convey cynicism without a visual aid.
Yes, they are both pretty bad. Some people wouldn’t think setting a cat’s tail on fire is all that bad, because “it’s just a dumb animal”. Some people don’t think spiking someone’s brownies is a huge big deal, because it’s “just hash”. Maybe that’s because they are around the drug a lot, and they think pot’s perfectly normal and harmless. Just like some people think a cat is “just a dumb animal”. But not everyone thinks a cat is “just a dumb animal”, and not everyone thinks forcing a controlled substance upon a bunch of unwitting people is not a serious and severe thing.
There is no way a 14 year old kid doesn’t know that hash is an illegal substance, there’s no way a 14 year old kid doesn’t know that it’s an illegal substance that is mind-altering. Every time, it’s illegal, it’s mind-altering. He knew that from the beginning, his goal was to get his class “high”. I think he had a pretty good clue about what he was doing. Maybe he didn’t imagine every possible dire scenario, but high is high. And apparently he wanted his teacher to get high too? He thought this was funny? The little shithead.
And no, I never used cherry bombs, never threw a snowball (we don’t have snowballs in L.A.) and never got into a fight.
So you are now going to advise and instruct us on the proper use of smilies? Ooh ooh ooh. Oh please, share your wisdom, share your genius. Please instruct the rest of us, who rely too much on “visual aids” for your delicate sensibilities.
While you’re at it, why don’t you start a whole new thread, where you can “suggest” all the ways we can “improve our writings skills”? I’m sure we’d all benefit from each pearl of wisdom you’d care to impart.
Is that sarcastic and cynical enough for you?
To a certain extent I can relate. My son, at age 16, and a couple of his friends decided to ‘make’ their own version of pot and sell it. Another kid made the stuff, I have no idea what he used but it looked real enough. Only way to prove it wasn’t was by sending it to the state lab for testing, which they did. In the meantime, my son was expelled for the rest of the year and not allowed back in any public school. Didn’t matter that it took 3 months to get the results back from the lab, he was just out of luck. He had all the charges against him dropped, yep, he actually did take a pack from his buddy and sell it to a girl on his buddy’s instructions.
Course at 16 he was considered an adult. It was hell, and yes, it did alter his life more than I can even begin to tell you. His choices in life were limited and because of a stupid mistake, no question about it he was the one to blame for making the mistake, he lost a lot of opportunities and has some bitter memories and not too much trust in the justice system that wouldn’t believe him when he said it was a joke.
This kid? Too many questions. Where did he get the pot? Where were his parents when this was going on? Believe me they’ll catch hell for it too, because he is a minor. Try him as an adult? I don’t feel it would help. There are lots and lots of punishments to put on him without permanently ruining his life. What kind of trouble has he been in before? What’s his grades? Lots of things to take in consideration before you throw him to the wolves. He did a terrible thing to be sure. Maybe the people he did it to should have a say in his punishment. As long as some type of punishment is handed out and it’s not just swept under the rug as a prank, he might be taught one of his life’s greatest lessons.
Hey, but don’t let that stop you. I say string him up in a public area so we can all throw things at him. Naaah, that’s too good for him. I know, make him eat poison, yeah, and eye for an eye.
Yeesh, it was POT, the kids are FINE (“fine”). If it had been shellfish you would be more likely to kill someone.
[horrible thought]
shellfish brownies
[/horrible thought]
“an” eye for an eye. No more brownies here…
And for God’s sakes, man, lay off the shellfish…