DON'T BOGART THAT PLAYDOUGH, DUDE

Apparently airports and rail stations aren't the only places where people
need to keep an extra alert eye out for trouble.

In two separate schools and two separate instances, children, we're talking
little little kids here, brought cocaine for show and tell and the other was
caught sprinkling marijuana on another student's lasagna at lunch.

The kindergartner, a 5-year-old boy, was seen by a monitor seasoning his
friend's lunch with what police say he may have said was oregano. As much as
I didn't like the cafeteria food when I was in grade school, there were
still certain things kids in my class weren't willing to risk in order to
make lunch taste tolerable.

In the other instance, a 4-year-old boy brought a bag of cocaine for show
and tell that police say is valued at about $10,000. Saying it was flour,
the boy saw nothing wrong, or didn't know any better, with sharing with his
class what a Colombian kilo looked like.

In each case the parents are going to be questioned. Miami-Dade Police are
still seeking the 4-year-old's parents.

According to CNN.com, "Indianapolis police said Tuesday they were still
seeking the boy's parents, Kenneth Lee Green, 24, and Andrea D. Jackson, 23.
Jackson was wanted on a warrant for failing to appear in court, court
records showed. Green had been convicted of carrying an unlicensed firearm,
resisting law enforcement and marijuana possession."

These stories about preschoolers and kindergartners say so much about so
many topics. Bad parenting, the state of drug abuse and education programs,
the need for more teachers or improving current teaching conditions all came
to mind when news of the story was heard.

Obviously, there is some sort of major problem when kids are taking more
drugs than Cypress Hill on tour to school. The ages of the children are what
bring so many shocked faces to this equation. Surely the parents are to
blame for the supply end of this story; however, the kids not seeing the
wrongness of what they were doing says volumes about what kids are being
taught about drugs.

As humorous as this sounds in hindsight, steps and measures need to be taken
before younger and younger children begin to develop a lack of qualms about
toting drugs in their backpacks to school.

By now, with drug usage rates not dropping, and often increasing, jails and
prisons overcrowding and the courts jammed with drug cases something has to
change. America is losing the War on Drugs.

The education plans we spend millions of dollars on are ineffective. If it
weren't the low-paid and mindful teachers and assistants who help raise
America's children, the kids in these two stories could have been seriously
harmed.

Although searching the backpacks of 4 and 5-year-olds seems extreme, what
else can we do to prevent drugs from entering our schools until we can
create an effective drug prevention, one that actually keeps kids away from
drugs?

Blaming the parents at this point is almost pointless. The parents of the
child who brought the cocaine to his preschool class are products of the
aging and ineffective D.A.R.E. program. At ages 24 and 23 they surely were
told by a uniformed police officer that, yes, "drugs are bad."

If parents are unable, or just unwilling, to speak to their children about
drugs, and if the schools and police are unable to be effective in their
drug education, where are the children of today to turn in the drug riddled
world of tomorrow?

We've been throwing money at the drug problem for far too many years. What
is needed most is an effective program - one that will reduce drug abuse.

Locking away drug dealers hasn't been fixing the problem. You close one
coffee shop and three Starbucks will open in its place. Before eliminating
drugs altogether, we first need to eliminate the demand. If we can
accomplish that, the supply will surely dwindle.

With no one in a position of power following that simple equation - it's no
wonder why we're losing the drug war at each and every turn.