Doggone sniffers a solution or not?

Wendy Leece

We asked our parent panelists this week: The district announced

recently that it will return to having drug-sniffing dogs as a

deterrent to drug abuse among students. Do you think it’s a good idea

and why or why not?

Bringing back the sniffing dogs is a good idea because it puts the

kids on notice that doing drugs is wrong and they are being watched.

And, should a student get caught, the parents, who may be in denial

about the problem, will be forced to seek help. But even if the dogs

don’t find any drugs, it doesn’t mean there are none. Forewarned,

kids will be creative in hiding them from the dogs.

A must-read each year for all parents, the famous zero tolerance

policy (https://www .nmusd.k12.ca.us /depts/ss/policy _4210.pdf)

details punishment for selling, or being under the influence or

possession of “any controlled substance” or paraphernalia. (It would

be great if all Newport-Mesa school district policies were online.

Irvine Unified lists its policy page as the No. 1 most requested page).

A child on drugs is one of a parent’s worst nightmares. But it

happens, even in the best families. The destructive powers of drugs

and alcohol show no mercy and don’t care about family income or

status. Impulsive and peer pressured, some teens become addicts

without their parents having a clue.

One of the hardest things for a parent to do is to admit that

their kid is on drugs. Usually the parent has a gut feeling because

the child has been acting suspiciously: erratic behavior, eye

problems, tantrums, staying up late, sleeping during the day, falling

grades, mysterious friends, truancy, weight loss, to name a few. But

knowing what to do next is challenging.

For more than 10 years, the district’s “Parent Project” has helped

dozens of parents who have problem teens and especially teens with

drug problems. Lynn Bloomberg, Bill Seery and Nancy Burchell are

three unsung heroes who have taught and groomed the intervention

program.

Now Pepe Montenegro is leading the Spanish speaking parent program

and Nancy is teaching a spin-off called “Design for Success:

Parenting Teens in 2005,” on April 11 and 18 at Harper School, with

an optional four-week support group. The first session is “Parenting

with the Personality Styles: Understanding what Works and Why” and

the second session is “Creating Effective Action Plans: Reduce Family

Conflict and Improve School Success.”

To register contact Pepe at 714.424.4763 or Nancy 714.424.8960.

The dogs are a deterrent, but parents have good sniffing abilities

also and should use them too.

* WENDY LEECE is a Costa Mesa parent and former school board

member.

I really want drugs out of the schools and was initially tempted

by the idea that just about any means that accomplishes that end is

probably OK, including having the drug dogs on the campuses.

However, there are many more fundamental rights at stake. I’m

satisfied that the nominal trade-off of losing one tool in the

anti-drug arsenal is far outweighed by the preservation of basic

civil liberties, making the drug dogs a bad idea in my mind. I also

think the drug dogs won’t catch much in light of the restrictions in

place, even further diminishing their value relative to the rights

concern. In the United States, everybody enjoys the right to not be a

suspect without reasonable cause and justification.

Having a drug-sniffing dog sniff every locker and car on campus

clearly puts every student into the position of being an automatic

suspect. We definitely have drug problems in our schools, but the

large majority of the student population are good kids and are not

using or carrying drugs at school. I don’t think that we get to

trample on their rights to root out the minority who might be

legitimate suspects.

Sniffing the cars on campus is also particularly troubling to me.

The cars are not the schools’ property and simply because they’re on

the school grounds hardly seems a justification enough to treat every

student’s vehicle, their private property, as suspicious.

I don’t know of any setting, other than borders and airports,

where every vehicle is subject to random inspection by authorities.

Lastly, due to the restrictions in place resulting from the ACLU

suit the last time these tactics were employed, it seems highly

unlikely that we’ll nab anybody except the few people who aren’t

smart enough to be careful. That probably leaves out the drug

dealers. The restrictions don’t allow the dogs to sniff the students’

person or backpacks. I’ve already heard several students laughingly

say that all one needs to do is keep the drugs in a pocket, purse, or

backpack. Given that attitude, it seems unlikely that the dogs will

even have much value as a deterrent or show of force.

* MARK GLEASON is a Costa Mesa parent.