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Is it just me, or did the thread title change between my reloads? 

No it's not you  I just decided to change the title.

in seventh grade, after a huge migraine when my crappy school wouldn't give me aspirin, i always had a bottle advil in my backpack (nevermind that it was two years old).

Stupid. Zero tolerance at work again!

Have zero tolerance rules EVER been used as they were intended, or have they only caught people who aren't doing anything wrong?  I can't seem to remember hearing any story about them doing what they meant to do.

We were never allowed to have pain meds either.  I had to get a prescription note to carry painkillers (you couldn't carry over-the-counter, even with a prescription, unless they'd been purchased at a pharmacy and were labeled correctly) so that I'd be able to function at school.  But if the drug dogs caught you with advil, you were liable to be suspended.

I think it has something to do with you not being 18 and they don't know if your parents permit you to take drugs.  Or maybe they're just worried you're gonna 'cause some kid to OD on advil.



It wasn't that big of a problem, really.  It's not like every child in high school needs painkillers.

I took prescription drugs and aspirin to school most of the time I was in school(graduated in 2001).

Thankfully, I went to a high school where most of the teachers had common sense.

This is where I'm glad I went to the high school I did. If there was zero-tolerance, we never heard of it. They only got antsy after the Columbine/Paducah shootings and told us to not leave our guns in our cars anymore. Knives were a common occurance, though. I kept a four inch United tactical under my vest at all times. The administration knew it was there. Same with some other students. I think they were smart enough to understand that if they stripped us of our "weaponry" that we'd be sitting ducks if someone did decide to berzerk amongst ourselves.

Zero tolerance is a joke, and I'm shocked that I haven't seen any political cartoons on it, actually.

what?

It's late. I'm not fit to type at the moment. I'll admit that the above isn't one of my better, cleaner, more comprehensible posts.

zero tolerance is ridiculous when applied without common sense...

Searches of personal possessions, of students and teachers, is bound to uncover items that each person needs for daily survival. Advil and all such over-the-counter drugs should be immune from the school's prosecution. Again...common sense needs to be paired with such zero-tolerance programs!

zero tolerance is ridiculous when applied without common sense...

Searches of personal possessions, of students and teachers, is bound to uncover items that each person needs for daily survival. Advil and all such over-the-counter drugs should be immune from the school's prosecution. Again...common sense needs to be paired with such zero-tolerance programs!

Common sense and zero tolerance at fundamentally at odds with each other. Zero tolerance = zero consideration for what is actually going on.

If you allowed things like advil, it would probably get easier for the drug dealers.  The drug dogs smell something, so the cops open up the backpack.  It looks like tylenol, but the school can't know 100% and now has to pay to test the tylenol and figure out if that's what it really is.

I'm not saying that zero tolerance is a totally good idea, but at least schools are making the effort to keep drugs off campus.

What if it's a little, yellow, different pill that says "Advil" on it?

search on someone without a good reason, Drug-sniffing dogs, metal detectors. This looks more like a prison then a school.

I'm grateful that we Canadians don't have a constitution that grant anyone right to possess weapons.For our school system, while not perfect, is not as F-U as this (from a violence and having you sniffed and searched and banned one year for having advil point of view).

Stupid. Zero tolerance at work again!

Have zero tolerance rules EVER been used as they were intended, or have they only caught people who aren't doing anything wrong?  I can't seem to remember hearing any story about them doing what they meant to do.

Nope. It is just a catch phase used to sell the immediate action demanded by stupid voters. They want results, results before the next election period.

Depends on what you mean by "doing what they (are) meant to do." If you mean, do they ever catch someone who actually has illegal drugs, probably so. But you probably will hear little about it. One: as mentioned in the article, such action is basically confidential information. I imagine the SD could say "we caught a student with drugs and suspended him/her" without violating confidentially, but realistically, they try to keep such things quiet. And no one is going to make a stink about it, like they do with these type of things.

However, if you mean "Do zero-tolerance policies suceed in keeping drugs, weapons, etc. out of schools", probably not.

On the other hand, a school district I worked in about 8 years ago tried to suspend a student who brought a gun to school. The student appealed, based on the idea that the rule simply stated it was illegal to bring "weapons" to school. He claimed he didn't know a gun was a weapon and the court actually uphelp this, forcing the district to re-write the policy and attempt to list every type of weapon conceivable. But I'd bet they didn't list a nuclear device, so you could probably bring one and get away with it.