COURT DECISION WILL DOG SCHOOLS

The Supreme Court of Canada recently ruled on a case that started in
Sarnia with regard to the use of police dogs to find drugs in a school
gym that had some school bags in it.

The court has ruled the search was illegal and as a result the
evidence does not count and the kid is innocent. This means there will
never be another dog in any school in this country.

The dogs need to go into the Supreme Court building because the judges
missed a few things in their deliberations.

Quite frankly the kid in Sarnia was holding a rather large amount of
drugs as he had five bags of marijuana and 10 magic mushrooms. Rather
than have the student face the music, it made more sense to challenge
the right of the police and their dog to be in the school.

The main thrust of the decision from the Supreme Court is that there
was no prior indication of wrongdoing on the part of the student body
and as a result the dogs should not have been in the building to start
with.

News flash folks: There are drugs in high schools.

School administrations have been hesitant to do much about drugs in
schools up until now because they have all been waiting to see what
would happen with this case. There isn't much hope now.

In the school environment it is pretty difficult to "prove" a kid is
high unless he admits it and even then there isn't a whole lot that
can be done about it. Usually the kid is sent home for the day and
usually it is left at that since if she is high already it isn't too
likely that she is going to be caught for possession anyway.

There have been incidents where kids have actually been seen dealing
drugs but they take off in the midst of the situation being
investigated by school officials and at that point the "evidence" is
gone.

Since nothing can be proven, it is difficult to even suspend the kid
for a day or two, never mind trying to get him out of the building
more permanently.

Drugs are already a problem in high schools. Parents seem to want to
believe that it is some other kid who is getting high in the school
yard before class, but the truth is that it is somebody's kid.
Believing it "can't be mine" is the kind of delusion that is usually
shattered in a very emotional and shattering way.

In order to learn and retain new information, most people have to be
clean and sober. This fact alone should have kept the courts from
making a decision that will almost certainly be interpreted by
administrators across this country that they cannot use one of the
most effective tools available to find drugs in bags, lockers, pockets
and all the other hiding places that a large building might provide.

This is a bad call, plain and simple.

The messages about drugs are confusing enough as marijuana has been
de-criminalized and now schools can't search for them. At least
cigarettes, that don't have the hallucinogenic properties of
marijuana, are controlled in some way by the law.