Dude, you're not even 30 yet.

Under no circumstances are you justified in using the phrase "kids these days."

Zero tolerance policies are a perfect example of what is wrong with society today. "Oh there's this bad thing, we don't want to deal with it. Let's just ban everything even close to it or mentioning it so we don't have to do anything difficult."

i actually agree with you there. i meant as far as zero tolerance on guns in elementary and high school. if a person has a permit then i think they should be allowed to carry on a college campus.


again, i am not saying kids should be allowed to bring all kinds of pills to school. i am saying disciplinary action should be allowed to be discretionary. a zero tolerance policy in and of itself is reactionary! i mean sure, have a zero tolerance on illegal drugs, but if a kid takes an aspirin and gets caught, i think a "first offense" warning would be incredibly appropriate.

weather or not a zero tolerance policy is a good idea, or fair, there is one other glaring flaw. THEY DONT WORK! if a kid really wants to take vicodin at school they can just put it in a pez dispenser and pop them between classes.

You didn't have to tell me that, I was already aware of it

I agree completely with BobTheMasher. Nothing else to say really.

You'd figure they'd just do what they do here: every student that relies on medication (birth control, insulin, stuff like that) has it documented with the school, and teachers are notified. If a teacher doesn't know about it and sends them to the office, they check the document, if it's listed, they let them go, if not, they call the parents.

The documentation usually relies on a doctors note too.

It's not completely full-proof, but it's certainly not overly-complicated.

@ lol at Darth_Alran's comments of the pez dispenser. Awesome.

Am I the only one aware of the actual reason why schools have zero tolerance drug rules?

It's lawsuits.

Er, as far as I'm aware, you don't need a prescription for birth control pills so there's no reason why there'd be documentation.

Yes, but they have to be left in the nurse's office, you aren't allowed to keep it on you in most cases.

see, this is insane! what good is an emergency inhaler if you cannot get to it in an emergency!!!???

Yeah, the whole point is that you use it when you start having an attack and you should have it on you at all times. If you don't get to it in a few minutes it can be seriously unpleasant.

When I was at school you were generally supposed to leave most medications with a member of staff, but inhalers were the exception. Loads of people had them and used them freely.

Feh i was always able to keep my inhaler. Kids in my school carried bongs around with them, so I don't think my school really checked people unless they had real probably cause. I went to a hippie school. :/

pretty dumb ***** for taking her BCP at school

Fair enough, but I'm going to disagree with you there.

http://www.shodor.org/~isinclair/lolwut.jpg

There's still documentation. You can't just buy it from the rite aid!

Also, I hear where you guys are coming from saying more lenient policies should exist, and to some extent I agree, but when you have kids of your own in school being put in contact with drugs and other bad influences, you'll see things differently I think. Why take the risk? A zero-tolerance policy is not unfair to the kids when they are made aware of it, and processes are made to allow those who legitimately need medications to get them (ie, have the prescription (or even tylonel for a headache) administered by the school nurse and documented, rather than leave it up to the kids).

Consider this also. A perfectly legitimate perscription medication to one kid, is a means to get high to another kid. And how often do teenagers misplace or lose stuff, or even leave stuff in a place where it can be stolen? If the medication that must be taken during school hours is given to the nurse where it can be put under lock and key and administered under supervision, you eliminate the risk of those medications falling into the wrong hands and being abused.

If I had a kid in a public school system, I would definitely support any rules or regulations that would facilitate control over drugs, be they illegal, perscription, or over the counter, so as not to run the risk of my kid getting ahold of something he/she shouldn't have, because the bottom line is, most kids are not responsibile enough for that sort of freedom, and when you have hundreds or thousands of kids in the school, there's no way to tell which ones are and which ones aren't.

a zero tolerance policy won't prevent kids from bringing drugs to school or doing drugs you know
and its not like kids going to share antibiotics to get high or something, thats what weeds for
maybe brining prescription medicine such as adderall or vicodin might be easier to get, but if a kid really wants those drugs all he or she has to do is ask the right people

more rules just mean more penalties, if thats where you're aiming for but i dont think that'll solve anything

Children should be allowed to make mistakes.

That includes fighting and weapons. There's a reason juvenile records are purged.

TheNewKid, I think it was pretty self explanitory there buddy.

AMERICA **** YEAH!

Right, and having laws against murder won't stop people from killing, so let's do away with those too.


Yeah, cause it's stupid to teach kids that their actions have consequences.

People learn best through negative reinforcement. (For example, you go to a drunk driving seminar and they say "don't drink and drive and we'll be friends! Here's a tee-shirt" or you drink and drive and get in an accident and kill your girlfriend. Which of these things will have a greater impact on you not drinking and driving in the future?)



Ok so when you have kids, don't tell them not to play with guns. Just let your son shoot his brother in the face and then say, "See Jimmy? That's why we don't play with guns. Now you know."

meh I'm just glad that I'm not in elementary/middle/high school anymore.

Also guys it's "ridiculous" not "rediculous" ... not to be a spelling nazi or anything but it is aggravating seeing it repeated over and over

this

pommy, don't redicule us for the way we choose to spel things

Its moronic bureaucratic attitudes like this that put honest men in jail. **** that. A birth control pill isn't hurting anyone -- and should be given a punishment that fits as such. People get too damn wound up about petty **** nowadays.. no wonder everyone is so crazy.

oh noes, I drew a picture!. I brought a gun to school, but wait! It's orange and shoots water! I'm on the drill team and left a practice rifle in my car! I pointed a chicken finger at someone and said "pow!"

This is why zero tolerance is bull****.

Bad argument (from TNK), bad counterargument. The real problem with zero tolerance drug policies is a problem of underdeterrence -- if the penalty is the same whether you're bringing ibuprofen or LSD to school, some students will figure they might as well go whole hog and bring the baddest drugs they can get ahold of.

In any penal system, gradations are pretty much essential. Zero tolerance is a nice way for ordinary people to make themselves feel tough, but it matches up very poorly with the realities of criminal activity.

Finally a legitimate argument against me. I admit I never thought about it that way, but now that you bring it up, I do believe the punishment should fit the crime. But the problem then lies in how you build your rating scale. Is heroin worse than marijuana? What about cigarettes? (equally illegal as far as that age group is concerned) Or imagine a kid brings in perscription Ibuprofin (800mg or higher tablet). How do you define to everyone's satisfaction what the guidelines are? The fact is, you can't. The far easier method is zero tolerance. And, as I said before, if the expectations are made clearly about what the rules are, then it's completely fair, and there's no reason why anyone should be caught off guard. I know it's not a perfect system, but we don't live in a perfect world.

"It's complicated to create a fair and sensible discipline system."

"Oh well! Let's just settle for the lowest common denominator and use a terrible, stupid system then."

Lol, Darkjedibob, I like the article on the toy gun.

How can anyone fail to see that suspending a 6 year old and putting it on his school record for an orange squrit gun isn't a valid punishment? Who knows.

God I hate authority figures. >.>

Lol, Darkjedibob, I like the article on the toy gun.

How can anyone fail to see that suspending a 6 year old and putting it on his school record for an orange squrit gun isn't a valid punishment? Who knows.

God I hate authority figures. >.>

When I was in high school if you needed any kind of medication, perscription or not, you just had to present a note from your parent and/or doctor regarding its use. If you didn't have a note, it was a phone call to the parents. Depending on the kid they might still give the parents a call even if they have a note. I remember a teacher telling me the policy was that certain medications were supposed to be held in the nurses office but that was rarely the case. Partly because I doubt anyone ever had those particular medications (painkillers and such) and party because we're a little more laid-back over here.

I would think that the time it takes to call a parent about the medication a kid has would be less than dealing with all the problems a wrongful suspension could cause.
I get that class sizes are probably far larger in US schools and parents don't actually raise their children but zero tolerance is just screwing over everyone in favour of preventing that one idiot kid that thinks it clever to take an illegal drug in school. I say let the idiot kid take the drug and have him sober in an over-night lock-up.

Way to over exaggerate, there.

For those of you who went to zero-tolerance schools, what was the verdict on epi-pens? They're those syringes for people with strong allergies that can cause anaphylactic shock; very useful in an emergency really.

Would they let the kids carry them or did they have to hope that the school nurse was a good sprinter?

Ad-absurdium. Of course I'll tell my children not to play with guns, or other weapons. (I'll probably take them to shooting ranges, so if they ever do play with them, it won't be so much playing as target practice.) But you know what? My brothers and I went off shooting BB guns and bows by ourselves all the time, and we knew better than to point them at each other.

But that's not the sort of mistake I'm talking about. Children need to be allowed to do stupid things. As an example, when I was twelve, I put on a light jacket for the first time in the fall that I had last worn in the spring, and found a pocketknife in my pocket. I proceeded to take it out at the bus stop and carve up a tree. This was, naturally, incredibly stupid; a parent at the bus stop called the school and the bus driver confiscated it. I got suspended for a day, which light as it is I still believe was too much. Now adays, a child doing that would have been expelled, straight A student, never been in trouble, doesn't matter. I was a victim of a zero-tolerance policy later on, and did get expelled. They are never fair, because fairness is never objective. It must be determined on a case-by-case basis.
Furthermore, the kids that bring the weapons are the drugs are the ones that need the school's help the most. How is kicking them out helping them?
And let us not forget that otherwise smart people can do incredibly stupid things. A straight A student can have the common sense of a cockroach, and appear dumb as bricks until you stick him in front of some math problems.