The Best Drug Store in Town

Note: This is an excerpt from Government Schools Are Bad for Your Kids.

Your local government high school is often the best drug store in town.  Government schools are the key distribution point for illegal drugs in many communities.  One study concluded that “80% of the nation’s high school students and 44% of middle-schoolers have personally seen illegal drugs used or sold and/or students drunk or high on the grounds of their schools.”[1]  Another study warns that rates of illegal drug use are no lower in suburban schools as than urban ones.[2]

Illegal drugs are tiny and easily hidden.  The government has made them quite profitable by making them illegal.  That allows those willing to risk prison—and we haven’t reached the bottom of that group yet—to make lots of money selling drugs to those who want them.  Take lots of bored young people who don’t want to be there and put them into a government school for six hours a day and you have created a wonderful profit opportunity for drug

This decision was later overruled by the Supreme Court but too late for the victim here and only on the particular facts on that case.  The court did not prohibit strip searches generally and their “syllabus” is a good warning to you:  “Its indignity does not outlaw the search.”[5]  As if to put an exclamation point on the court’s warning, an Iowa high school administrator recently ordered five female students to be strip-searched over a suspected theft.  The missing money was not uncovered.[6]

Why is the problem so bad?  We have already seen the answer in prior chapters.  Government schools are filled with people who don’t want to be there and who are bored and alienated.  As we are constantly reminded by those who defend government schools: they must take all students.  The fact that your kids spend six hours a day with fellow students subject to virtually no screening process is hardly a recommendation.  It is more of a condemnation. It is also difficult to discipline students.  So doing involves a whole host of legal and bureaucratic procedures.  In contrast, a disruptive student can simply be booted from private school.  Those charged with student discipline are bureaucrats, not particularly responsive to parental or student concerns.  Private schools must be so responsive or else face closing their doors due to a lack of customers.

A word to the wise should be sufficient.  If you send your child to a government school, they may learn more about chemistry than you could possibly imagine.

Notes

[1] Salynn Boyles, “Parents Blind to Rising School Drug Use”, WebMD Medical News (Aug. 16, 2007).

[2] Greene, J. P. & G. Forster, “Sex, Drugs and Delinquency in Urban and Suburban Public Schools,” Education Working Paper No. 4, January 2004 (Manhattan Institute).

[3] Id. at 4.

[4] From a brief filed on the student’s behalf, quoted by Jacob Sullum at http://reason.com/blog/show/125297.html

[5] Safford Unified School District #1 v. Redding, No. 08–479. Argued April 21, 2009—Decided June 25, 2009.

[6] “Administrator on Leave After School Strip-Search,” KCCI.com, Sept. 6, 2009.

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