ALLOWING DRUG-SNIFFING DOGS IN SURREY HIGH SCHOOLS

The Surrey School Board's plan to bring drug dogs into the schools, at $275
a sniff, is deeply flawed.

The idea is incredibly invasive of student privacy. If we continue to treat
our young people as potential criminals, when the vast majority will do
nothing wrong, they will live down to our expectations.

And we don't really want to follow U.S.-style tactics on this issue, do we?

I suspect that most of the students who run afoul of the drug laws do so
because they sometimes use marijuana. Do we really want to saddle more of
our young people with criminal records for engaging in a relatively
harmless activity that, by all accounts, almost half the population of
Canada has both participated in and wants to see legalized?

Sure, young people should not be doing drugs, particularly in school. But
the drastic penalty of criminal prosecution is overkill.

And sending in the dogs is absurd. Of course, by now we shouldn't be
surprised when the Surrey School Board adopts absurd and expensive
policies: This is the same school board that spent hundreds of thousands of
taxpayer dollars unsuccessfully fighting to keep a few gay-positive books
out of its schools.

Kirk Tousaw, policy director B.C. Civil Liberties Association