4 JUNIOR HIGH STUDENTS HIT WITH CRIMINAL DRUG CHARGES

Criminal charges were filed yesterday against four East Toledo Junior
High School students who are accused of swallowing prescription
sleeping pills to experience the drug's intoxicating effects.

The two seventh-grade and two eighth-grade boys ingested a drug called
zolpidem tartrate, sold under the brand name Ambien. According to the
National Institute of Health, the drug was approved by the U.S. Food
and Drug Administration in the early 1990s for short-term treatment of
insomnia.

The two seventh-graders yesterday were charged with delinquency in
connection to corruption of another with drugs, and all four students
were charged with delinquency in connection with drug possession. The
four, whose names were not released, have expulsion hearings next
week, according to Officer Mark Nelson, the Toledo Police Department's
community officer assigned to the school.

One of the seventh-graders is accused of taking the pills to the
school from his house and distributing them to the other
seventh-grader, who, in turn, is accused of distributing them to the
two eight-graders, Officer Nelson said. All four boys were taken to
St. Charles Mercy Hospital for treatment Thursday. School officials
learned the boys had ingested the pills after one of the students
collapsed in a classroom.