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School Drug Searches: An Education in Oppression
Published Saturday, February 13, 1999

Recent headlines from The Union are a frightening lesson in civics: “NU to bring in drug dogs” and “Drug dogs to sniff junior highs.”  Add to that the related January 27th headline, “Undercover NU cop has no regrets.”
 
Drug searches and underground cops in our schools are bad policy, with the result that our children are growing up with no regard for their own rights. We are preparing them to live in a dictatorship.
 
This is a difficult issue. On February 10th, even The Union was divided, printing two contrasting editorials on the subject. For a moment I thought Both Sides Now was running a few days early.
 
Certainly we want our schools to be drug-free, but what are the appropriate steps to achieve that result?  Let me suggest to you that dogs and undercover police are appropriate only for police states.
 
To bring you up to date, on December 4th of last year, there were 10 drug-related arrests at Nevada Union High School.  This was due to the efforts of a youngish looking narc who had been planted there. My understanding from the mother of one busted student is that the kids were sold on the idea he was a sad case from a troubled family, and they should try to make friends with him.  Just hearsay, but it seems plausible.  Some kids obviously got too friendly.  In the end, ten little lawbreakers were busted at an assembly and marched off.  My gosh, the highest level of public service must be putting a 16-year-old in the pokey.
 
Thus begins “Drug Wars 1999” (watch for it in a school near you).  On January 21st, The Union reported that the NJUHSD board, presumably on the recommendation of superintendent Joe Boeckx, unanimously approved granting a contract to Interquest Detection Canines, a rent-a-dog service from Texas, to conduct unannounced drug searches at the high school.
 
Yes, Virginia, you can rent drug-sniffing dogs for your party or wedding reception for only $300!  At Interquest, their slogan is “We sniff ‘em, you stiff ‘em.”  This adds new meaning to that old line, “Why Timmy, I think Lassie’s trying to tell us something.”
 
By February 5th, the Lyman Gilmore and Seven Hills middle schools jumped on the paddy wagon with a news story that they would be using Highway Patrol dogs to enforce their “zero-tolerance” policy. Incidentally, the disease of drug abuse at Gilmore amounts to two students in three years.
 
This is intolerable.  In the past, school boards and administrators were fairly harmless, at the most producing hall passes, study halls, and the occasional attempt to ban “The Catcher in the Rye.” Now they have taken on the tasks of spying on students, putting them in jail, marring their education, and communicating our disregard for their minimal rights.
 
“Protecting” students by treating them like inmates, in the name of a “zero-tolerance” numbers game, is ridiculous.  Also, don’t you find it amazing that there’s never enough money for athletics or music, but the school can always scrape up some cash to arrest your kids?
 
How do high school kids feel? They think the busts are OK because they happened to somebody else. They think the smart kids (probably quite correctly) won’t get caught.
 
We are teaching the students the worst civics lesson possible, that “if you’re innocent, you have nothing to fear.”  I think that’s what victims of the Inquisition thought.  Even many Jews in Germany were not worried when the Gestapo came for communists, homosexuals, and gypsies. Then one day they come for you.
 
The students don’t yet understand that in this country, you are supposed to be arrested for probable cause.  In America, we are not supposed to entrap or go prospecting for criminals.  Cops are not supposed to “profile” people (like “Arab-looking” people in airports or young black men in white neighborhoods).  There’s also no justification for random drug testing.  Maybe it’s time to learn about the Bill of Rights in the NUHS civics classes.
 
Civilized people don’t spy on each other. Nor do they bring in animals to do the work.  Further, civilized people don’t do this to each other’s children.  Every parent in these school districts should be livid that their child is being molested by the school system.
 
Barry Schoenborn is a technical writer, and a ten-year resident of Nevada County. You can write to him at barry@wvswrite.com. The opinions of columnists are not necessarily those of The Union.

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