DRUGS BEING KEPT OUT OF SCHOOLS

In the first month of the 2000-01 school year police charged 11 students
from the city's two high schools for illegally possessing marijuana.

Beaver Brae principal Christine Frank says the public high school is
working "very closely with (Joint Forces Unit) drug investigators to keep
drugs out of the school.

"(The investigators) could be here 24-hours a day, seven days a week as far
as I'm concerned. It's to the benefit of all the students in our school
that we keep drugs out of here."

Of the 11 charges, Det. Staff Sgt. John Horne, who heads the drug unit,
says none have been laid on school property.

"The drug investigators are working with the schools to address concerns
about drug use and the arrests and charges have all occurred off school
property, involving students at both high schools," he says. If caught on
school property with contraband, a student faces an automatic 10-day
suspension at the public high school while St. Thomas Aquinas
vice-principal Bob Valentini says 10 days would be a minimum suspension for
such an offence at the Catholic school.

"It would be an indefinite suspension and could be an expulsion," he says.

Drug investigators began working closely with schools this year in response
to reports over concerns about students using drugs.

"There are concerns from staff and students because a lot of good students
are messing themselves up doing drugs," Horne says.

"It's not hard to tell who's using. They come to school bright-eyed and
ready to go and come back in the afternoon slow and lazy."

Signs of marijuana use, according to the drug unit, include having a
distorted sense of time, slurred speech, memory loss, loss of co-ordination
and lack of motivation.