How High is High School?

http://www.ketv.com/news/18526297/detail.html

The above link is an article from the Omaha news website about a 16 year old girl in Iowa who brought prescription drugs (Xanax) to school that belonged to her mother and gave them to three other students. The girl also took them and for whatever motivation was behind it she took between four and eight pills which was enough to send her to the hospital. I didn't know that Xanax could be crushed and snorted like cocaine. It can also be disolved in water and injected like heroin. The news article doesn't give that info or just how the girl and the three other students took the pills. It is also easy to overdose on Xanax with symptoms of that being:

confusion
coma
impaired coordination
sleepiness
slowed reaction time
dizziness
slow heart beat
difficulty breathing
difficulty walking and talking
an appearance of being drunk
unconsciousness

Scary stuff. Medications that might be in the parents or Grandparents medicine cabinets could be trickling into the schools without anyone catching on like they did in this instance. The girl had 50-100 Xanax pills with her. She could have given them to far more student with far worse consequences. Thank God that didn't happen. As it stands the girl could face charges of some sort for the choices she made. Could? Perhaps that is the problem. Unless there is swift and measurable consequences the message it sends to that girl, the other students who were not afraid to accept the pills and anyone else considering taking drugs to school is that they might just get away with it. Surely that is not an effective deterrent! Not to worry though, the sheriff's office is getting right on the issue. They said in a statement that they plan to IN A FEW MONTHS assign a deputy to the Drug Awareness Resistance Education Program. Lets see, it is near the end of January so in three months it will be the end of April so for the last month of school there will be a deputy assigned to the DARE program. Hmmmm. Doesn't sound like protecting our kids is a high (pardon the pun) priority. Lack of action and consequences make me think that the DARE program really stands for Drugs Are Really Easy to get program.