(Christian Science Monitor) Around the country today, hundreds – perhaps thousands – of high schoolers are bringing pot to school, and they’re doing it legally. Not to get stoned, but as part of prescribed medical treatment. And they don’t have to tell school authorities about it.
This is putting teachers and principals in a new and challenging position. In many counties and school districts, there are no clear guidelines – for school officials, students, or parents.
“This is all just kind of starting to happen,” high school principal Jeff Schlecht told the Ashland Daily Tidings in Oregon. “It does place us in an awkward position.”
For many students, the issue comes as no surprise.
“I’ve known about this for four years,” Ashland senior Wesley Davis, 17, told the newspaper. “Some of them have it for medical reasons, but others are just trying to get free weed and sell it, turn it around.”
This weekend at the Oregon NORML meeting I met a sixteen-year-old patient who uses cannabis for a rare brain disorder that builds up calcium deposits in his skull. He was there with his mom and dad, both everyday-looking parents without a hint of counterculture about them.
But again, how much is the cause of legalization for all adults compromised when teenagers talk to the media about their classmates “just trying to get free weed and sell it”? We have to show the skeptical parents that the reason the teenagers are even able to buy and sell the marijuana is because it is illegal, and that a legal regulated market for adults would bring licensed sellers who check IDs and depress the prices to the point of not being worthwhile to “turn it around.”
