STUDENT SUSPENDED BECAUSE HIS COAT SMELLED LIKE POT

OTTAWA - An Ottawa-area high school suspended a student on Tuesday because
his jacket smelled like pot.

Chris Laurin, 15, was sent home and told not to come back to St. Matthew
Catholic High School in Orleans for two days after a police dog zeroed in
on his winter coat.

The police were on a routine search of the school when the coat was singled
out.

Police and school officials ordered the boy's pockets emptied and searched
his locker. They found nothing, but the principal decided to suspend him
anyway under the board's safe schools policy.

"There shouldn't be drugs at school," said Laurin. "But suspending me over
nothing is a totally different topic."

The Ottawa-Carleton Catholic School Board supports the school decision,
although superintendent of student services Michael Baine won't comment
specifically on the case.

He said board policy doesn't spell out punishments for every possible
infraction, leaving school officials a lot of latitude.

"You can't have a specific thing for every possible thing that can occur
around weapons or drugs or alcohol or anything else," he said. "A principal
has to look at an entire picture and has to make a determination as to what
the appropriate punishment is."

Police say dogs can smell marijuana on clothing for months after exposure.

Baine says regular drug searches are part of the board's safe schools
program aimed at keeping drugs, alcohol and weapons out of schools.

Written by CBC News Online staff