STUDENT SAFETY

Well the website said it would take 1 to 4 hours to get a response posted. It took them about 18 to put mine up, but it's now on the drug bust thread at WXII12's discussion forum. No one's responded so far but I guess I'll keep the link for a couple of more days to see if they do.

Meanwhile I have one more story on the North Carolina high school bust in question. The MSNBC report has a better account of how the bust went down. It turns out it was at more than one school.

It started out like any other school morning. The hallways filled with students rushing to get to their next class while simultaneously catching up on the latest gossip.

But at 8:15 a.m. Wednesday, all six high schools in North Carolina's Alamance-Burlington School District went into lockdown mode. Officers from several law enforcement agencies had already gathered at the schools for a massive drug bust.

By the end of the morning, 49 students - out of a total high school enrollment of about 6,300 - were taken into custody on felony drug charges of "possession with intent to sell and deliver." The majority of cases involve marijuana,[emphasis mine] but there were other drugs including ecstasy, Oxycontin and cocaine.

I've already told you how stupid a strategy I think this is, but I'd like to also mention this. Our country is being run by people who experimented with drugs in their youth, including George W. Bush. If they busted every person who smoked pot then, we wouldn't even have an internet. I don't know one computer geek who didn't smoke it, and look how well they did without intervention.

The current marijuana hysteria among parents is one of most destructive aspects of the prohibitionist agenda. Parents are supporting these police actions out of concern for the safety of their children because they buy into the lie that you can scare kids out of doing drugs. Meanwhile, allowing this atmosphere of intimidation to alienate their kids, is what puts them in harm's way. Allowing the children to suffer punishments far beyond the seriousness of the infraction "for their own good", is not good for them. And allowing the black market to thrive under prohibition will not eliminate the drug supply that enters their schools.

I mean how dangerous can this plant really be if so many of us survived its use and went on to become productive citizens.

And while we're speaking of prohibition lies, the article points out an inconsistency in prohibition propaganda. The scope of the alleged drug problem in these schools would suggest the government studies saying drug testing has diminished teenage drug use were as wrong as the intelligence on WMDs. Bush touted this statistic in his state of the union address, as reason to spend 23 million tax dollars on expanded student drug testing. They can't have it both ways. But they'll try.

The new ONDCP ads, that are partly generating the hysteria that allows these raids, are now specifically targeting the parents with their message since they can no longer deny the failure of their previous campaign to reach the young people.

Those working on the [ONDCP] campaign say they realize the message isn't getting across to some teens about drug prevention.

So the new strategy is going after the peers and parents of teens who have already started talking drugs in the hopes of getting them help before police arrive in their classroom.

We can hope the parents are as smart the children are and see through this propaganda as well.