When the
government first regulated the use of drugs and alcohol, law enforcement
agencies were more lenient towards minors in possession than they were to
adults who were found with the same drug.
In today’s society, however, minors found in possession of illicit drugs
and alcohol are getting the book thrown at them, because of America’s war on
drugs. This especially holds true in
America’s public high schools. Students
found with these materials can receive a range of punishments from extended
suspension to law enforcement intervention (mostly used on first time
offenders). These types of punishments
tend to leave students with permanent scars on their records. These scars make it almost impossible to go
to a good college, get college loans, and even get well paying jobs. The penalties given, to the person and their
record, outweigh the severity of this one mistake. Although, these punishments exist in virtually all public high
schools, for the most part, they are no where to be found in private schools. Private high schools take a much different
approach to drug and alcohol policies. Their policies allow the school to deal
with individual cases instead of placing all offenders into the same category,
as public schools do. This approach is
the more logical one, because it gives students a second chance. The discrepancy between the drug and alcohol
policies of private and public high schools should be leveled so that public
school students receive the same type of treatment that private school students
receive.
An argument can be made that first time high school drug offenders do
not deserve a second chance, because they should not have had the illegal
products in the first place. First time
offenders should be accountable for their actions just as everyone else
is. These types of offenders should
also be the ones who receive the most punishment so they will learn not to do
it again. In addition, first time high school
offenders will not want to go back to drugs once they have experienced an
extensive dose of the legal system.
The previous argument, though clever, can
be countered, because first time high school offenders need more than just
legal intervention to solve their drug and alcohol problems. According to Lynda Longa, reporter for The
Atlanta Journal and Constitution, over half of youth drug offenders, who
are processed by the legal system, repeat their offense (Longa 03B). This shows that many high school age drug
offenders do not respond positively to legal remedies for their mistakes. If anything there is a negative correlation
between legal system solutions and teenage drug use. In this type of situation, where first time high school age
offenders are involved, drug and alcohol counseling is a more viable option
than law enforcement intervention.
Private high schools tend to have and use this option, where public high
schools are forced to use legal remedies, which do not work on these types of
offenders.
Although high school drug and alcohol
policies vary from state to state, the basic generalization can be drawn that
private high schools have a more lenient policy toward first time drug and
alcohol offenders than public high schools do.
The forbearing policy that private high schools have, on drugs and
alcohol, allows them to find other alternatives to solving first time offender
problems than involving the police.
Private schools like to give students a second chance when it comes to
first time drug offenders. This is
partially attributed to the fact that most private school students come from
good family backgrounds and the parents are active in the child’s upbringing as
well as their education; so if a drug or alcohol problem were to arise then the
parents are there to discipline their children with the school. Private schools’ second chance policy,
however, is most attributable to the fact that private schools believe that
they are trying to raise upstanding, moral, and intelligent young men, and they
understand that on the road to greatness there are going to be some roadblocks
(drugs and alcohol) that have to be cleared.
Those blocks should not hurt the student but help him to grow. So the private schools develop programs for
their students with these problems. According to Patrick Tobin, vice chairman
of the Headmasters and Headmistresses Conference, “A significant number
of teenagers will be involved in drugs or underage drinking at some point. Both are against the law. It would be quite wrong though to think that
everyone who has touched drugs should be scarred for life” (Scotsman 7). Private schools and their educators
understand that young people are going to make mistakes, but instead of hurting
the child by involving the law, the schools use their mistakes as building
blocks to achieve greatness.
Unlike private schools, public schools
involve local law enforcement agents when drugs or alcohol are discovered. Many public schools have a uniform policy
that states that anyone caught with illicit drugs or alcohol will be turned
over to the police. This policy does
not allow the school to have any discretion of its own when dealing with
individual cases that might be completely different in their levels of
severity. An example of this would be
one person who was a bad student and had been caught with drugs or alcohol many
times in the past, and another person who was a good student and never had any
previous drug problems, but they were found with drugs or alcohol. Obviously the first person needs more
discipline than the second person does.
Under the current system the second student would receive the same
punishment as the first person and would be permanently scared, because the
student would now have a permanent criminal record that stays with him/her for
an extended period of time. This
discrepancy between private and public high schools puts the public schools’
students at an inherent disadvantage, which can cause them trouble later on in
their lives.
The discrepancy between public and private
school drug policy makes policy change an important issue that needs to be
dealt with by local school and government officials. Change is primarily needed, because teen drug and alcohol abuse
is becoming more frequent in public schools, showing that current policy
measures are not working to deter young people from drugs. According to the National Institute on
Drug Abuse (NIDA) among state and federal funded high schools in 1998
marijuana use has increased by about 56 percent since 1991 and alcohol use has
increased by about 15 percent. The NIDA
also found that 60 percent of 14 and 15 years old students at public schools
have been offered illegal drugs (NIDA p.1).
These startling statistics point directly to the fact that current
public school drug policy does not work.
Children continue to experiment with drugs and alcohol despite the legal
penalties associated with them. In
addition to the increase in drug use, CNN News found that “The
proportion of high school students who believe regular use of marijuana was
harmful in 1998 had dropped by about 26 percent since 1991 to only 37 percent”
(CNN News). The current 1999 NIDA
marijuana and alcohol statistics are: 49.6 percent use by 12th
graders and 22 percent use by 8th graders (of marijuana), and 81.7
percent use by 12th graders and 53 percent use by 8th
graders (of alcohol) (NIDA p.2). By
keeping the current drug and alcohol policy public schools are not only telling
children that schools do not care if they do drugs (lack of good prevention and
counseling programs/ increase in use), but they are also telling the children
that the schools do not care about their personal well being (uniform policy
where first time offenders are treated the same as repeat offenders). In addition to these statistics, the current
drug policy also puts public school students at an inherent disadvantage to
private school students, because first time offenders, in public schools, are
not getting a second chance as they do in private schools.
Another reason why current public school
drug policy needs to be changed is, because keeping high school age offenders
tied up in the legal system cost taxpayers too much money. Statistics are showing that more and more
tax dollars are going to criminal juvenile drug abuse cases. According to Carl Rowen, reporter for The
Denver Post, American taxpayers spend on average 20,000 dollars a year to
keep each individual juvenile drug offender locked up for possessing as little
as two ounces of marijuana. This cost
is well beyond anything taxpayers give to keep a single child in a public
school. Youthful drug offenders, sent
by public schools into the court system, cost taxpayers 2,000 dollars a day in
court fees and costs per child. In
California taxpayers pay 51,000 dollars a year to individual prison guards to
watch the juvenile drug offenders while teachers earn on average only 43,000
dollars (Rowen K-03). Each statistic
points back to public school drug policy, because every time the police and
court system has to get involved in the situation it costs taxpayers more
money. What makes these statistics even
more disturbing is the fact that a majority of the money spent on juvenile drug
offenders can be avoided if public schools would only change their policy to a
more focused case by case policy. In
addition to the money spent on juvenile drug offenders, taxpayers are also
spending immense amounts of money on drug prevention programs that are proven
not to work. According to Ralph
Franmolino, reporter for The Los Angeles Times, “Drug and alcohol
prevention programs cost 566 million dollars a year to keep in public schools”
(Franmolino p.3 Metro). This is a
ridiculous amount of money to spend on prevention programs that for the most
part do not work. The programs have not
curbed or even slowed down drug and alcohol use among teenagers. Instead of spending all this unneeded money
on juvenile offenders and prevention programs, public schools need to change
their policy to a more moderate one that allows for discretion.
If public schools look to change their drug
and alcohol policy they should follow the lead set by private schools. Private school policy on drug and alcohol
use is a policy that does not look good in theory, but works in practice; where
as public schools policy looks good in theory but has been proven not to work
in practice. Private school policy
takes the approach that first time drug/alcohol offenders can be reformed if
you reach them in time. The majority of
private schools offer counseling and other forms of treatment to solve the student’s
drug or alcohol problem. What makes
private school drug and alcohol policy so successful, however, is that the
schools get the parents involved in the student’s rehabilitation. They focus on the fact that it takes an
entire community to help keep a student on the right path, so the private
schools involve everyone. An example of
how private schools are winning their war against drugs and alcohol is the St.
John Baptist Parish private school system.
The Parish has eleven campuses located in the state of New York. Five years ago the Parish implemented a new
system into their school system in order to deal with drug and alcohol problems
that had been increasing in years past.
They created a program where first time drug and alcohol offenders were
put into counseling programs twice a week for a determined amount of time, and
the students also had to submit to random drug testing. According to statistics compiled recently,
by the St. John Baptist Parish, the private school system has witnessed
a 74 percent drop in drug related offenses and a 100 percent drop in alcohol
related offenses over the past five years.
The first year the policy was put into place, the 95-96 school year, 31
students were found with or under the influence of drugs. The next year, 96-97, only 16 students were
found with illicit substances, and during the 97-98 school year only 8 students
were found with drugs (Times-Picayune p.A1).
This is a dramatic improvement, which was totally accomplished without
any law enforcement intervention. In
addition, 20 students were written up for alcohol use or possession during the
95-96 school year. The total dropped to
7 students in 96-97, and the 97-98 total was 0 (Times-Picayune p.A1). This was also done without any sort of
police interference. These facts and
statistics show that private schools’ policies are working and if public
schools would implement the same types of policies than they could cut down on
tax dollars being spent on juvenile offenders, and they can give promising
students, who make a mistake, a second chance.
Now that it has been determined that policy
change is necessary, the final logical step is to create a new policy. This policy should focus on first time
offenders only, because repeat offenders are just abusing the law. The policy change is about helping students
who make a mistake not giving them a way around the law. The new policy should focus on three main
things counseling, random drug test/searches, and parent
intervention/supervision. First,
counseling is extremely important when dealing with students who have drug or
alcohol problems. The counseling should
not just be for a couple of weeks, but it should be for an extended period of
time, such as half a school year. This
amount of time is necessary so students will not stray back to the wrong path
of drugs and alcohol. The counseling
should discuss the long-term physical dangers of repeated use of drugs, but
more importantly it should discuss the affects that drugs can have on future
career and college goals, because if students understand that drugs and alcohol
can take away from their future earnings potential then they might stay away
from them. Second, random drug test and
searches should be mandatory for first time offenders. Tests should take place for at least a year
after the original infraction and searches should last for about three
months. Tests and searches are needed
to keep the student honest in his commitment to stay away from drugs and
alcohol. These tests and searches also
give school officials a reliable way to know that a student has stopped using
or possessing drugs or alcohol. Third,
parental intervention and supervision is the most important aspect to keeping a
student drug offender on the right track.
The parents in this situation should take an active part in their
student’s rehabilitation and they should shoulder some of the responsibility if
the student fails. They should have to
take responsibility, because it is their duty to care for and watch what their
children are doing so that their children will have no way of regressing into
their old ways. Parents should have to
meet with school administrators and teachers on a monthly basis to discuss how
they are making sure that their children are staying away from drugs or alcohol. With these three steps public high schools
can drastically improve their current policy and help to give good students a
second chance.
As America moves into the 21st
century, it is important to remember that the children are our future. Our nation has to mold them into upstanding
citizens who will want to make a positive contribution to the world. During this process, however, there are
going to be hardships and hindrances that our children must over come in order
to complete their journey. It is our
civic duty to not let these children make their journey by themselves. When they stumble and fall we should be
there to pick them up. Just as private
schools make an effort to give students a second chance. We too should be there to help students get
a fresh start. It has been established
that public school policy needs change.
It has also been established that public school policy needs to be
changed for many reasons, most notably to give their students the same
opportunities as private schools. With
these thoughts in mind, I make a plea to public schools across the nation to
give their students a helping hand by changing their current drug and alcohol
policies to a more case by case focused policy that gives schools the power to
distinguish between bad students who make bad decisions repeatedly and good
students who make a bad decision infrequently.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
CNN News Poll. Feb. 19-21, 1999
Franmolino, Ralph. “Drug prevention programs do not work.”
The
Los Angeles Times. May 26, 1998. P. 3.
Little, Tom. “Tolerance-Plea.” The
Scotsman. Jan. 22, 1999.
p.
10.
Longa, Lynda. “Schools fight alcohol, drugs.”
The Atlanta
Journal
and Constitution. Dec. 1,
1998. p. 03B.
National Institute on Drug Abuse. Jan. 5, 1999. P. 1-2.
Rowen, Carl. “Prison-heavy and schools-light.” The Denver
Post. March 14, 1999. P. K-03.
Warren, Bob. “Student Problems Drop in St. John.” The Times-
Picayune. April 7, 1999. P. A1.