ANGRY PARENTS MUST BE WATCHFUL ABOUT VIGILANTE JUSTICE

Parents with children attending schools where they know drugs are
being dealt may experience both anxiety and frustration. That's
understandable. They worry that their kids may be tempted to
experiment with illegal substances -- and they may also feel there is
no one with whom they can discuss their fears.

There are, indeed, many unanswered questions.

What, precisely, should be the role of schools in policing the sale
and use of drugs? Should school principals adopt tougher, invasive
policies to monitor drug use and pass on information to police? Should
drugs in schools be a matter for the police alone?

For parents at one B.C. school, the 460-student Hope Secondary, these
questions have become academic. They've decided that the only way to
get things done is to take aggressive action.

They have plans that include videotaping drug dealers near schools and
posting lists of traffickers on street poles throughout the town.

Such tactics reflect the raw anger many parents feel at the parasites
peddling drugs to their kids.

But we are inclined to agree with principal Chuck Lawson that such
vigilante-style tactics may be misplaced. They could present obvious
physical dangers to parents wielding video cameras in front of
possibly armed dealers. And there are legal issues involved in posting
names of suspected traffickers in public places.

This is not to say the parents aren't onto something positive. A
somewhat similar project was launched recently in the Tustin school
district of California. There, parents have formed a web-based network
to share information about suspicious behaviour. They post
licence-plate numbers of suspected dealers and identify places where
they are known to operate. They share information privately among
themselves about the kinds of people their kids are associating with.

This strikes us as a more sophisticated, and less hazardous, approach
to the problem. But although the program is popular among parents,
some teens see it as an intrusion into their lives. And there is an
important lesson here.

Kids make decisions about their lives every day. Most are good, some
are bad. But we can't bully children into accepting our views about
drugs by restricting their right to exercise personal
responsibility.

What we can do is to make sure that we provide them with fair and
unbiased facts about drugs, so that they can make informed decisions.

That's a task all parents can undertake -- without becoming
vigilantes.