Tin Foil Hat Time? Sugar=Felony in School

I am usually of the opinion that a big government tends to be an incompetent government--so it naturally limits the amount of damage it can do.

Well, our big government / nanny state with its zero tolerance laws has combined incompetence with efficiency. There are lots of examples out there, but here is a recent one (Feb 11, 2006 article):

Boy Charged with Felony for Carrying Sugar (at school, 6th grader):

[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]A 12-year-old Aurora boy who said he brought powdered sugar to school for a science project this week has been charged with a felony for possessing a look-alike drug, Aurora police have confirmed.[/font] [font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]The sixth-grade student at Waldo Middle School was also suspended for two weeks from school after showing the bag of powdered sugar to his friends.[/font]
[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]...[/font]
[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]Two other boys asked if the bag contained cocaine after he showed it to them in the bathroom Wednesday morning, the boy's mother said.[/font]

[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]He joked that it was cocaine, before telling them, "just kidding," she said.[/font]

[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]Aurora police arrested the boy after a custodian at the school reported the boy's comments. The youngster was taken to the police station and detained, before being released to his parents that afternoon.[/font]
...
[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]Look-alike drugs and substances can cause that same level of danger because staff and students are not equipped to differentiate between the two." [/font]

[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]The school handbook states that students can be suspended or expelled for carrying a look-alike drug.[/font]

[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]Penalties for juveniles are decided on a case-by-case basis, but if convicted, the sixth-grader could likely face up to five years' probation, said Jeffery Jefko, deputy director of Kane County juvenile court services. [/font]

[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]Juveniles who have prior criminal records could also be placed in a residential treatment program if convicted, he said.[/font]

Click to expand...

Out here in California, a third strike for "conceled carry of surgar" could get you 25 years to life??????

-Bill

Nothing wrong with running a "tight ship."

They can charge him with possesion but cannot reveal his ID due to the fact that he is a juvenile. Like oil and water eh. Ridiculous.

That sounds unbelievable. If the kid was not trying to sell it as dope, what is the problem?

Stuff like this is getting out of hand. A 6-year-old was just kicked out for "sexual harassment" at a school in this state. He apparently grabbed a girl's waistband.

This is what happens when people cede their responsibility to watch out for their own to the goverment. You end up with a plethora of inane laws which punish people for doing nothing which they didn't harmlessly do before for years. These laws also violate the fundamental legal principal of not having any recourse under the law unless tangible harm is done. Tangible harm in general means injury, loss of property, loss of life. It doesn't mean hurt feelings, being scared, or seeing something offensive. It seems we have lazy lawmakers making up more and more "throw the baby out with the bathwater type laws" to pander to a constituency who complains about the dumbest things because they simply have too much time on their hands.

What probably started this nonsense was you had a few people who maybe had dire reactions seeing powered sugar, and so they wrote their representatives saying that it should be banned in public places because it "looks like" certain illegal drugs. Of course, the representatives were only too glad to find an excuse to write yet another law since it makes them look like they're actually doing something productive. Viola, now we have the government wasting time because some kid decided to play a practical joke. Years ago, at best the kid would have gotten a stern warning from a teacher or other school official, maybe combined with a note to the parents, and that would have been the end of it.

Clearly this nonsense needs to end. Besides having a moritorium on new laws, every level of government should go through the books to repeal every single law of this type. Whether it be laws against look-alike drugs, or minor acts of touching which only look sexual in the lawmakers' filthy minds, or cycling on sidewalks, or bans on certain types of speech only offensive to vocal minorities, it is clear that these laws have to go. We cannot have a justice system so overburdened with nonsense cases that major ones don't get the fair hearing they deserve. I'll even go so far as to say that certain levels of legislature are totally unneeded such as the New York City Council. I don't recall the City Council doing much of anything except passing these types of laws which fine harmless citizens and burden businesses with all sorts of tickets for nonsense.

Click on this link for more lunacy.....

www.papillonsartpalace.com/stories.htm

These kinds of zero tolerance statutes are there for one reason only; to remove the burden of judgement from school officials. IMO, that is a ridiculous thing to do and leads to ridiculous outcomes like this one. School officials should have the power and the burden to make decisions based on what they believe to be reasonable. Unfortunately in our lawsuit happy society this is going to only get worse. I see similar things happening in the corporate world.

"Look-alike drugs and substances can cause that same level of danger because staff and students are not equipped to differentiate between the two."

Any staff that can't tell sugar from cocaine should promptly receive remedial training. (ie, be forced to stay after school) It is easy, one simply gives the package to a cop, names the student from whom the package was taken, and asks the officer to do a field test.

My children never need contend with idiots... only because I have no children.

I can't say what I would like to do these retarded school officials and cops, because I would end up in jail.

drizzle said:

zero tolerance .

Click to expand...

Yep, Orwell was right. "zero tolerance" sounds like newspeak to me. In oldspeak it was "intolerance" but "intolerance" is now itself a crime.

Thanks for the link to that site, nikon. Really interesting reading. This seems to be a partial answer to that thread about Americans getting more stupid.

:shakehead Good grief. Using that reasoning, you could say that a glass of ginger ale is a "look alike" for beer.

I guess I'm missing the joke the kid was trying to play..."Hey, look guys, I've got some coke! let's snort it!!"

Now, you wanna see funny, watch the kid's friends get their milk-straws out and snort the pixie stick dust..THAT'S worth seeing..trust me, I've seen a kid do that before..

In history, every civilization has had its uprise, peak, and downfall. I believe that the global economy and tech sector starting to favor Eastern countries, such as India and China, the increased "politically-correctness" of American society (Hot Coffee, anyone? Violence is okay, sex is not? Can we still say what we mean? Can we do anything without fear of litigation?), and overzealous governmental policies governing things politics should really not mess with? (RIAA, for one.), all point to American society and civilization as we know it to be on its way out. Who knows, maybe we'll be on the rise again, but as it stands right now... things are looking down.

Back when I went to school, I would have gotten my a** beaten and sent home...Oh yeah, can't do that anymore. Better to put the kid on probation!!!

eluminator said:

Yep, Orwell was right. "zero tolerance" sounds like newspeak to me. In oldspeak it was "intolerance" but "intolerance" is now itself a crime.

Click to expand...

It is been my experience that zero tolerance of intolerance is done on a case by case basis depending on what you are intolerant of.

When one considers all of the "dangerous" things that can be brought into school in the normal course of a science class, it would be pretty easy to get one's knickers in a twist over it. I remember one science fair project when a student put together a laser using a ruby rod and the usual supporting components and built something that could burn holes through razor blades! I doubt that this would be allowed in a high school science class today even though it was a very useful project and demonstrated some important principles.

Perhaps the anwer is a ban on new laws until most of the old ones are repealed.

HarryN said:

Perhaps the anwer is a ban on new laws until most of the old ones are repealed.

Click to expand...

sounds good to me