A CRIMINAL SCHOOL DRUG POLICY

All four of the Greenbergs came to the front door. There was Bruce, 45, an
executive recruiter who works out of the family's lovely, large Colonial
home in Fairfax Station. There was Angela, 44, who runs a couple of antique
shops. There was Kevin, 10, who wanted to head outdoors and make a snowman.
Last to appear was Nikki, 12, who's shy and sweet and facing a drug rap, if
you want to call Advil possession a drug rap.

Her school does.

On Wednesday, in fact, Nikki almost certainly will lose her final appeal
and be suspended for five days for having been nabbed on the bus home with
a couple of Advil that the seventh-grader had taken to her school in a
plastic bag to -- surprise, surprise -- dampen some pain.

Not only would Nikki be tossed out of class, she and her parents would have
to participate in a "drug use prevention follow-up activity" to ensure
they're no longer oblivious to the threat posed by Advil, because, as you
know, heroin and cocaine junkies start small, usually with coffee or
aspirin.

In the real world, which is to say anywhere that's not a school system,
Nikki can march into a pharmacy, buy Advil, walk the streets flaunting it,
swallow it in front of a cop and run no risk of acquiring a case number or
needing a defense attorney. But in the zero-tolerance, apply-no-judgment
milieu of public education, no lines are drawn between illegal and legal
drugs, prescription and nonprescription, LSD or Bayer.

"This will be on her record," Bruce Greenberg said of his daughter, adding
that she had no record before, either in or out of school. "This won't be
purged when she goes to college. She'll be on record for violating the drug
policy, for two damn Advil. That's the thing I find totally astounding."

You'd think such stories of vanished common sense would dry up as the
embarrassment spread, but the nation apparently has a limitless supply of
officials willing to bring up kids or adults on knee-slapping charges of
sexual harassment (a 6-year-old kissing a 4-year-old!) or drug abuse
(teenager has Advil!).

The cases arise out of anti-this or -that policies drafted for reasons well
and good, but life always presents situations unenvisioned. No matter. No
exceptions made. Absurd punishments are meted out anyway, because we can't
have anyone using their craniums. That would make us seem better than
animals and fish.

In Fairfax County, where Nikki lives, the school system wants to keep kids
from doing illegal drugs -- which sort of goes without saying -- and legal
ones, too, theorizing that kids will find a way to use the over-the-counter
stuff badly. Nikki's parents knew the rules, up to a point. So did Nikki.
The schools had sent home a booklet saying kids can't have "a controlled
substance . . and any prescription or nonprescription drug not authorized
as medication under Regulation 2102.3," although it didn't send home
Regulation 2102.3.

Your average sentient being probably wouldn't conclude that the ban is
aimed at Ben-Gay. Or Clearasil. Or a Band-Aid with antibiotic in the pad.
Or Ricola. Or eye wash. But, spreading those products and others on the
Greenbergs' living room coffee table, Laurie Frost said every one will get
you suspended in the schools of Fairfax County.

Frost, a lawyer retained by the Greenbergs to keep their daughter from
being branded a druggie, went to a Giant, bought a bunch of ointments, lip
balms and cold remedies, took them to a hearing about Nikki's alleged crime
and was told that a hefty majority of the stuff was illegal in school,
although not on the street, which rather renders the war on drugs a farce,
since crack now equals Clearasil.

If the Greenbergs had taken time out from life to go to the library, where
Regulation 2102.3 is on file, they would have learned that a
"nonprescription drug not authorized as medication" includes really
innocuous stuff, because that reg cites "aspirin, Tylenol, gargles, ear
drops, eye washes, ointments, Pepto-Bismol, cough suppressants and the
like." It leaves to parents to figure out "the like."

Vitamins?

Violation, Frost said.

Nasal spray?

Violation.

Well, ignorance of the law's fine print is no excuse, they say. Nikki broke
the rule, however absurd it is. She was caught when a student who wasn't
feeling well asked if Nikki could spare an Advil as they rode the bus home
from Hayfield Secondary School, Frost said.

Nikki didn't give him one, by the way.

The best part is that her punishment is the same as it would be for awful
stuff: automatic suspension. Students caught with cigarettes or caught buck
naked don't even face that, said Carter S. Thomas (Springfield), a member
of the Fairfax County Board of Education, who calls the case "a terminal
case of stupidity."

He offers a simple solution. Kids ought to be allowed to have in school any
product they can have outside school. If they use such a product in a dumb
way -- if someone passes around gobs of Clearasil and kids ingest it, which
might be some sort of cheap high, although I doubt it -- then step in and
crack down.

In other words, exhume discretion, the commodity buried by the nation after
we decided that robotically treating every situation the same way was
easier than actually thinking about it.

Ah, but it's too late for that for Nikki. They're taking her down for Advil
possession. You know, when she called home from school to tell her dad, she
was crying.

(c) Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company