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 Commentary:
States Must Fix School Drug Rules
by Philip Terzian, Providence Journal, October 24, 2004
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There is good
news on the zero tolerance front.
Back in the late 1980s, when public hysteria about day-care
abuse and satanic cults was beginning to subside, its successor
doctrine captured the imagination of school administrators.
This was the notion that a "drug-free school zone" did not just
mean the absence of marijuana and heroin, but any pharmaceutical
product.
Students were forbidden to possess or ingest such dangerous
opiates as Tylenol, and students with particular medical
problems were required to store their pills and elixirs under
lock and key in clinics.
It also meant that students with asthma, which affects some 6
million children and is the leading cause of school absence in
America, had to store their life-saving medication and inhalers,
locked and inaccessible, in school clinics.
The result was inevitable. In California, an 11-year-old boy
named Philip Gonzalez appeared in the school office exhibiting
signs of a severe asthma attack. Because the administration
required that medication be stored in one specific place in
school, he was unable to gain access to relief in time,
suffocated and died.
All of which prompted Congress recently to pass the Asthmatic
Schoolchildren's Treatment and Health Management Act of 2004.
Since the administration of public schools is, essentially, a
state matter, the act merely gives federal funding preference to
states (31 so far) that have passed laws protecting a student's
right to carry and self-administer asthma or anaphylaxis
medication.
This is some recognition that our zeal to protect children from
self-destructive behavior may also result in needless suffering
and death.
Philip Terzian writes for the Providence Journal.
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