What do you all think of school drug raids?

[The Backlash Cometh]

It's sort of a catch twenty-two allowing high school kids the opportunity to develop groups that are notorious for pot smoking. Especially when they're part of a sports team and form a tight inner circle where girls might show up to their "parties."

Anyone who hasn't figured out that these groups gravitate like nomads from home to home to carouse wherever parents might be absent is being very naive. Why is it a problem? Well, as much as it might sound like paradise to some of you, the kind of practices that spread STDs takes place continually. One night stands, girls who allow themselves to be double-teamed. Is there evidence that there is an increase of STDs in the high school. Yes, I'm afraid so.

So, I was not surprised to hear that the police raided the school with sniffer dogs, and they went for the cars in the parking lot this time. There were some surprises. Poor luck girlfriends who allowed their boyfriends to leave their stash in the car got caught and some notorious pot smokers called their mothers to sneak into the parking lot to get the stash out of their cars.

No, I'm not kidding. I live in the west end of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Anyway, what does everyone think about these kinds of raids?

[DS1]

1. I've been through the dog thing in high school

back in 1990 or so. Didn't think much of it, school grounds is their turf. However, stay the hell out of cars. That's too big brother for me, even if they are parked on school property.

[The Backlash Cometh]

4. Let me tell you, it freaked a lot of people out.

I know there are a lot of people crying tonight.

But, I don't think the law will differentiate between a school parking lot and a building. As for invasive dog sniffing searches, you can thank Scalia for a very loose interpretation of the law.

[DS1]

7. I had my vehicle searched once, but this was in the Marines

Word of a barracks inspection had leaked, so everyone threw their porn mags and beer into the back of their cars the night before. The uppers couldn't believe they came up with nothing, so the next morning there was a car search, where all the good stuff was found and taken away and later drank by the 'uppers'.

Assholes

[The Backlash Cometh]

9. LOL!

[tabasco]

10. No beer in the barracks?

That is fucked up.

Was that just for underage troops?

[DS1]

12. No, everyone

then they relented and allowed up to one 6 pack per room if one or more occupants was over 21. No wine, wine coolers, or anything other than 6 beers. but it was quickly rescinded after someone went out and came back drunk. run by idiots.

[annabanana]

2. I think

that marijuana ought to be legalized AND

I think
that parents ought to keep better track of their kids.

[The Backlash Cometh]

3. See, that's the thing.

When two parents work, kids are going to have a lot of time on their hands and parents who think their kids are mature enough to handle whatever they find in someone else's home, may be setting their kid up for some bad experiences.

[hellbound-liberal]

5. As long as it is clear that these type of tactics will be employed, I have no problem with them

I feel badly for the "innocent" friends who get caught but maybe it will be a good lesson for them on choosing friends who won't put them in legal jeopardy. BTW, I am all for the legalization of marijuana and feel that all drug addiction should be treated as an illness not a crime. I am also well aware, however, that if schools do not take steps to keep drugs out of our schools, then their use and sale will certainly become more common.

[RedCappedBandit]

6. Here is what I think:

The war on drugs is absurd to begin with, so the entire notion of trying to catch people with "controlled substances" and arresting them is despicable.

Aside from that, even if we assume the war on drugs is the proper way to approach the problem of addiction, what good does tracking down high school kids and ruining their futures do? It is absolutely ridiculous that we waste our resources on catching kids with pot.


As an aside, what makes you think the girls caught with pot were only holding onto it for their boyfriends?

[seabeyond]

8. i am told it is a free for all anymore with no boundaries and if i think otherwise

i am all kinds of things

that was me being a bitch...

i am not fond of search even in schools, and i feel for the kids today, the permissiveness. my 12 yr old was telling me the std's were at 1 in 4 people, 1 IN 4 .... he shouts to me. ya, well kid, i hope you make it to adulthood disease free.

i am teaching my child. the realities, the responsibilities and the hard core truths, will be theirs to make the choice

[Two Americas]

11. choose one

Support the Bill of Rights, or support this.

I can't believe that one poster said about innocents caught up in the dragnet: "maybe this will teach them not to choose friends who put them in legal jeopardy."

Human beings as consumer items - "pick the right friends for yourself, keeping in mind the need to accommodate the police state and protect your own ass."

Would having Arabic friends put me in legal jeopardy? So many decisions to make in order to successfully live in a police state. This is almost as difficult as making investment decisions in a corrupt and collapsing empire.

Pick your friends carefully - the authorities are watching you, and you wouldn't want to place yourself in jeopardy.

[The Backlash Cometh]

17. It is a conundrum.

But, frankly, if you expect teenagers to act like mature adults, it's just not happening. Too many of them see no negative consequences of over-socializing with beer, drugs and sex starting in the eighth grade. Then when they look around in their Junior and Senior year and see the immigrant student who never quite fit in but studied his ass off, the racist comments begins to try to explain why the immigrant kid got in a good college, but they didn't.

Kids need direction to stay away from drugs, unless you're suggesting that it's okay for high schoolers to get into the drug scene?

[seabeyond]

20. happy medium. i hate the searches yet, .... i raise my children

i am lucky to be stay at home, i am lucky enough that kids let me be a part and confide at this point. i am lucky cause their friends hang here.

kids absolutely need direction and too many arent getting it.

still dont like the searches.

[hellbound-liberal]

23. As someone who works with teenagers everyday, I see bad choices as a big problem for many of them.

As a veteran of an urban high school in the DC area, I saw that many of my students had problems due to the fact that they didn't make good decisions for themselves and ended up getting themselves and others in trouble. I also had several students busted for selling drugs on school property, (one of them had a loaded 45 in his locker). Like it or not, many of the people who are supposed to be raising the children of today are not doing their job and they fail to give their kids the social skills and emotional support that they need to function well in school as well as society. Don't lecture me about living ina police state. As a longhair living in a small town in South Florida, I am well acquainted with living in a "police state". That doesn't mean I am willing to turn a blind eye to the students of today who NEED the guidance and supervision of a concerned adult in order to keep them on the right path. BTW, your comment about having an Arabic friend is just plain ignorant.

[The Backlash Cometh]

25. Thank you for your comments.

High School kids definitely need guidance, but you said it better. They need a place where they can develop "social skills and get the emotional support to function well in school as well as society."

I'm not putting down parents who both have to work, but I am saying that these parents need to make arrangements with other families in the area to make sure their homes are not being used for party central.

Better yet, have the kids get involved with an after school program. In this particularly community, in the middle school years there is no intramural sports, which I think is a horrible mistake. This is where the problem begins in this particular place.

[Echo In Light]

13. More totalitarian/police state bullshit, sold as "$ecurity & protection"

[The Backlash Cometh]

19. What about the STDs?

This particular high school has the highest level of STDs in the area and yes, there is a party network that starts in the eighth grade where they go to houses where they know there are no parents and they experiment with everything. drugs, beer and sex.

[Echo In Light]

30. Irrespective to how the young act out in this warped corporate culture, I still disagree w/police ..

State measures, period. States are violent systems, those beholden to its hierarchy usually have ulterior agendas for many of its laws/legislation.

Not for a moment do I believe that systems that have zero qualms over, say, incarcerating huge sectors of its own populace {growth industry in a fascist state}, or mass murdering untold scores in foreign lands for hegemony/corporate gain, actually care about the well being of its own citizenry, or humanity in general. It's only due to be raised within these structures' 24/7 propaganda systems that such alarming collective cognitive dissonance prevails, allowing the state to say one thing, yet do the opposite, and still have a majority believe the un-reality.

While there may unfortunately be plenty of ill equipped parents out there {likewise fucked up from living within our diseased culture, abiding its propaganda}, it remains their primary responsibility to raise their eighth grade children, STDs or otherwise, not the state, and its lapdog police force who in many instances round em up to run em through the $ystem.

[The Backlash Cometh]

33. We will disagree.

You don't take into account how alluring these parties are, and how kids are made to feel like they're not part of the "cool kids" if they are not a part of them.

The only way to avoid them, is to spend the $40,000-$50,000 it takes over the course of a kid's lifetime to get them so caught up in a sport such as gymnastic or soccer, that they skip over that phase. And even then, you only delay it. You just hope that when they make the mistakes at the age of 18, they are better emotionally equipped to handle the consequences.

[madeline_con]

14. Do you think pot's to blame for promiscuity?

Lots of people :smoke: AND keep their pants on and their mouths closed. :blush:

[Echo In Light]

15. The Establishment's "war" on pot is ideologically based in many aspects

All those Counter Culture era people telling Big Brother and Uncle Sam to shove it ... haha, pot was EVERYWHERE, and became guilty by association. {not that the phony "war" on pot began in the 60s though}

[The Backlash Cometh]

21. LOL!

Hell yes. I can't believe you are even questioning it. These are kids. They want to be popular and they have an entire house at their disposal to do it in and plenty of people in the house as an audience to attest to their "coolness."

[LibDemAlways]

16. My daughter's school conducts drug raids this way:

A school administrator enters a classroom unannounced during class and students are ordered to remove their jackets and step outside, leaving all of their personal belongings behind. The door is closed while a dog sniffs around in the room.

This happened in one of my daughter's classes a couple of weeks ago. She said the teacher (who is very young) said to the kids , "Don't you feel violated?" when they were all outside waiting to get back in.

I think it's unconstitutional since it's clearly a search conducted with neither a warrant nor probable cause, but apparently it's routine, and an effective way to teach kids that they are living in a police state and that the Bill of Rights is a joke.

[seabeyond]

18. the whole thought of that gives me the creeps. cant stand that.

nothing you as a parent can do?

[LibDemAlways]

22. I work as a substitute teacher in the district. Making waves

would lead to a loss of income. Mention it to other parents and they think it's fine. People are more and more being conditioned to accept big brother without question.

[Echo In Light]

31. Just one more aspect of American fascism

[mdmc]

24. i desapprove of them

[Nevernose]

26. I'm good with it, to a point.

I suppose how, when, and where have to be in question, though. And, for the sake of disclosure, I'll say that I've quite possibly taken more illegal drugs than any other poster on this board has (and except for beer, I'm sober these days).

Even in Amsterdam drugs are illegal. They make a distinction, though, between types of drugs, and they offer free, humane services to those wishing help for the disease of addiction.

Another poster suggested that in their school district, they made all children remove all personal items and step outside. A clear violation of the fourth. But if you don't want dogs barking at your trunk (which has happened to me, by the way, in Roswell NM) then don't have drugs in your car. A trained dog barking at a public place is probable cause.

I've spent my professional life working with messed up families and messed up children. I began as an intake officer for Juvenile Probation and moved on to a career at a job that pays half in money but twice in spirit: teaching the hardest classes at the hardest school in one of the nation's hardest districts.

Drugs -- including alcohol and legal prescriptions -- disrupt the lives and learning of thousands, millions of kids every day. Why have we so messed up the world for them? Why do so many people in America feel the need to escape? In the aforementioned Amsterdam they have HALF the addiction rates, even for alcohol, and twice the services? How are we failing tomorrow?

We can be against the war on drugs and still be against drugs. The dog-sniffers are just people who just haven't figured out that difference yet.

Finally, an interesting statistic I heard on HBO's addiction series: y'all know what the recovery rate difference is between people who go to rehab voluntarily and those who go as a result of a court order? Virtually nil. There is no difference; motivation does not determine success.

(If you should reply and I don't get back to you tonight, I will in the morning)

[The Backlash Cometh]

27. Great post. Thanks for the insight.

[NuttyFluffers]

28. that's what black pepper paste is for...

if i'm storing a delicious cake in my car its odor, just as its sight, is none of your business. if you just happen to get too close and smell the chili powder and black pepper i also store, then that's your problem, right?

as the immortal call for privacy goes: "get thee big nose out of me and mine cracks and fissures, lest ye get yon foul whiff of brimstone"

[MuseRider]

29. Been going on for a LONG time.

They used to raid our lockers, persons and cars back in the late 60's and early 70's. Did that ever stop? Used to piss us off but then they also cut our hair so yeah, we were pretty pissed off a lot of the time.

[Echo In Light]

32. The anti-drug stance stems from the same intent as cutting your hair, only w/the law to justify...

Establishment prejudice and motive. Incidentally, my hair is almost waist length :hippie: