There’s apparently no limit to zero tolerance drug paranoia.

Trophy Club, Texas

Kyle Robertson, 16, was suspended from school because his eyes were red and watery.

On the basis of this fact alone, they decided he had been smoking pot.

No other reasons for bloodshot eyes were considered, like the fact that Kyle’s father had been stabbed to death two days earlier, and he had been crying. He could have stayed home, but wanted to be at school with his friends.

Administrators, after talking with his mother and learning the situation, still required her to take him to get a drug test within two hours and show a copy of negative test results, before they’d let him back in school.

[Thanks, Brian]
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36 Responses to There’s apparently no limit to zero tolerance drug paranoia.

  1. Just me. says:

    WTF !! Red watery eyes? Whats the hells next? His hair is just a bit too long..might mean your a hippie? You say the words dude or man…you might be high?

    Hell my eyes are very red and waters every year due to allergies. i wouldnt have made it through a semester today with all these people looking to deny a student and education over cannabis.

    This policy is just as bad as prohibtion…deny anyone suspected of consuming cannabis a job, drivers liscense, education ,housing ….when will the persecution end?

    Apparently not soon enough.

    Leave the kid alone.

    Get our government out of education.

  2. Benjamin says:

    Wow, I’m probably not even gonna make it through college with these dreadlocks.

  3. rugged individuals says:

    Druggies, terrorists and nazis lurk around every corner! Save me mommygov! Here is all my rights just keep me safe.

  4. Duncan says:

    I’ve always had an advantage because I don’t suffer that side effect from consuming cannabis. Nothing but dumb luck, but one time back in 1980 I was at my pot dealer’s house getting toasted when the police served a search warrant. I was let go because ‘it was obvious’ that I wasn’t getting high. Sorry Orificer, but I was stoned to the bejeesuz at the time. Oh yes, back then it was popular for people to believe that cannabis caused dilated pupils as well.

  5. Duncan says:

    rugged individuals, I’ve never felt safer than when I spent a couple of months in solitary as a guest of Fairfax County VA.

  6. truthtechnician says:

    Bloodshot eyes alone cannot legally constitute probable cause.

  7. darkcycle says:

    The prohibition madness, the drug testing industry, and anti drug zealots are powering this. School boards are packed with holier-than-thou individuals. They don’t really qualify as big government since they’re elected at a local level. A state judge in Califonia just struck down required drug testing for after school programs. Big government protecting us? nobody gonna give credit to a good court decision being big government? After all, the Judicial branch is a full fledged division of big government.
    There is nothing that pisses me off more than when some illiterate sixth grade dropout decides they are going to “home school” their child. Private education costs tens of thousands of dollars a year in this country. It isn’t available to a huge majority of Americans. If you don’t build and maintain public education, you better start building alot more prisons. The liberatarian solution.

  8. Bruce says:

    My last checkpoint experience was one akin to a Doctors visit, extensive attention paid to my eyes, cop flashlight right up on my cheek, creep going “hmmmmm”
    I’ve basically given up driving. To the store and home.
    Creeeeeeeepy.
    I’ll forever regret not hopping the wall into East Berlin, when I had the opportunity, age 15

  9. Bruce says:

    1974, My vist to Berlin wall.
    Awesome hash in Deutschland at that time BTW
    5 marks per gram, about $1.30

  10. permanentilt says:

    Wow! So apparently I can get high by wearing my contacts too long. Funny, I never FEEL stoned.

  11. allan420 says:

    aaah Bruce… I remember $5 kilos and $.25 Thai sticks in Thailand (’73 – ’74) and Mescan going for $50 a kilo when I was in Texas (’74). And truthfully, none of the hi-grade today is any better than the Thai ganja.

    Stories like poor Kyle’s really need to end. REALLY need to end…

  12. ezrydn says:

    Odd as it may sound, I feel much safer here in Mexico than I do when I come up there. After 3 days in the US, I start to get the shakes and head home where it’s safe and comfortable. I know what you’re thinking but the news makes it much worse that it truly is. And I hate interfacing with my own Immigration personnel. Coming back here is like night and day with Immigration. The US is Night. Here, it’s Day. “Hello, Sir. Did you have a nice trip? Welcome home!” That’s what I get here. You don’t want to know what I get up there.

    Plus, I can carry on the “fight” from here, just as easy as I could when I lived up there. Prices are much, much better here, too. On Everything!

  13. claygooding says:

    I live northwest of DFW and can assure you that we have many people that fear the weed just as portrayed by the school admin. I have had threats and public arguments from rednecks that feel that marijuana is just as dangerous as arsenic.

    Even when you show them proof that aspirin kills 3000 people a year in the US and marijuana has killed no one,it is like a cloud comes down over their eyes and they go into a trance of DARE infested sewage.

    They are so brain washed that the only way they would find out just how safe it is if they end up needing it for nausea from chemo and some relative is nice enough to turn them on. Then they become advocates.

  14. darkcycle says:

    Ezrydn, I live 40 minutes from downtown Vancouver B.C., but here on the U.S. side. Same story up here, Canadian Customs: “Hello, Sir, do you have anything to declare? Hope you like Canada, and would you like a maple bar?”
    U.S. Customs: “SHOW US YOUR PAPERS! SHUT UP! WE’LL ASK THE QUESTIONS! BERNIE, GET THE RUBBER GLOVES, WE GOT US A LIVE ONE HERE!”
    We may not have the best prices, but the QUALITY up here…. Oddly enough, feels safer in Seattle though.

  15. Bruce says:

    Don’t kid yourselves, the new GPS threat is real.
    My last two trips to my friends up island,,,Helicopters came, as I sat there, holes in my clothes, hungry.

  16. darkcycle says:

    Why are you eating holes in your clothes, Bruce? Jeez man, make a sandwich, and stop smoking that Haze, you’re wiggin’ out. Oh hey, pass that before you put it out….

  17. Bruce says:

    Its been great this past couple years with the Vancouver Olympics and Toronto G20 eating up enforcement resources.
    Now its back to business as usual, picking thru the pockets of us tokers, seriously, had no sooner got my car out of the impound yard, and a helicopter began circling overhead.
    Hungry lol
    After 6 months out of work, I even went to RCMP HQ with crossed wrists, after being denied welfare, but they just laughed at me. Its lonely at the top.

  18. darkcycle says:

    Oh yeah…the principal also decided the suspension will stay on little Kyle’s permanant record. What an excellent drug warrior. Even in the face of proven innocence, just because we suspected you, you’ll pay the cost. After all, in the drug war, suspicion is guilt.

  19. Just me. says:

    Huummlol. Didnt the patriot act make it legal for them to arrest anyone …I mean…if you speak out against government your considered terrorists…..

    Red eyes not needed.

  20. darkcycle says:

    Oddly enough, an allegation by law enforcement is all that’s required for asset forfieture. No suspicion required.

  21. Bruce says:

    Permanent record, now thats disturbing. Not what my grandfather and his buds envisioned as they fired their artillery at Vimy Ridge. Wait a sec, They did get shot at dawn if they refused to fight.

  22. Nowhere Girl says:

    “Guilty until proven innocent”…

  23. malcolmkyle says:

    “Comments are now closed” .. and we own the whole thread!
    http://tinyurl.com/37uq9t6

  24. ezrydn says:

    I like the crowd pleaser, “Name one prohibition that has been successful. What model of success are you following?”

  25. Chris says:

    malcolmkyle, that move any mountain person in the comments was just scary. They literally took every point made by anyone wanting to legalize drugs and just stated the exact opposite. Authoritarians are scary.

  26. Chris says:

    Wow, as I’m reading more and more of that person’s comments, yeah I was right. It’s so mindblowing that I have to reiterate what I just said: they take every point by a drug policy reformer and state the exact opposite, no matter what that may be. Alcohol is a hard drug? Nope, it’s a soft drug! And the cognitive dissonance is astounding. It’s like they can’t put complex concepts together. Example:

    “Prohibition causes massive crime and suffering, causes government/police corruption”

    “No, criminals cause all of those things. Prohibition is a few words on paper. It causes none of them. If all criminals stopped being criminals tomorrow we would not have these problems whether or not heroin was legal.”

    It’s like they live in an authoritarian fantasy world where you don’t have to ever think beyond the letter of the law. It doesn’t matter if you were trying to save that child from an oncoming truck, that’s jaywalking, you
    re going to jail.

    A reasonable person would make the connection that these people would not be criminals without prohibition, therefore preventing the “crime”. Violent crime, if it still happened, would still be targeted but you would not waste time prosecuting the non-violent crime.

    And the fact that they believe alcohol is nothing but good for you and that tobacco prohibition will not cause additional violent crimes… amazing.

  27. Chris says:

    malcolmkyle, you’re a terrible person for linking that to me.

    “When heroin was legally sold in local pharmacies and grocery stores for pennies per dose the term “drug-related crime” didn’t exist, and neither was the United States the most incarcerated nation in history.”

    Correlation is not causation. You may as well say when all men had short hair cuts and went to Church on Sunday, the term “drug-related crime” did not exist and neither did the US have such high imprisonment rates. For an encore you could go on to argue that America needs to return to the crew cut and Church.

    “The Portuguese government decriminalized the personal possession of all drugs in 2001. Five years later, the number of deaths from overdoses dropped from 400 to 290 annually, and the number of new HIV cases plummeted from nearly 1,400 in 2000 to about 400”

    They did not decrimimalise it as such. They moved these crimes to administrative tribunals that sit without juries or defence lawyers. But notice the year – 2001. The Taliban introduced a prohibition of heroin production. Across the world heroin use dropped and hence so did overdoses. Nothing to do with these policies at all as far as we can see.

    Just file this in the encyclopedia under cognitive dissonance. I don’t think that can be topped.

  28. darkcycle says:

    Chris….I don’t know how to tell you this, but if something isn’t criminalized, then it’s users and sellers aren’t criminals. People who aren’t guilty of a criminal act (in an ideal world) don’t need to be imprisoned. This isn’t a political stance. This is logic, dude, not statistics. No correlation involved at all; that’s direct causation.

  29. Pete says:

    darkcycle — I believe that Chris is still quoting from the conversations in comments over at the Guardian article…

  30. darkcycle says:

    Oh, my bad. Not following closely enough, sorry chris, your logic is still unimpeached.

  31. darkcycle says:

    Anyway, you should be around to hear some of the crazy stuff I say when I don’t have to think about it long enough to type it….

  32. allan420 says:

    ‘ere… darkcycle… puff some of this Oregon Honey Bear… fffffffffffffffp… don’t know if it’ll help but it can’t hurt. Literally.

    And I went and read some of those Guardian comments. Same old same old. “I bet Indonesia doesn’t have drug problem…”

    Then move to Indonesia asshat. Cognitive dissonance indeed. They forget that harm is relative and there are several scales of measurement. Cannabis is at the bottom of virtually every one.

    Oh… and ae’s Made Up Word of the Day© – “cannabinated”

  33. malcolmkyle says:

    Allan, I once came across somebody claiming that his martial arts teacher had told him that Taiwan was drug-free. So I did a little research, and was able to give the following reply:

    So why didn’t he mention Taiwan’s No. 2 crop after rice, addictive betel nuts? The seed of the betel palm is worth US$359 million annually with 1.6 million users -17.5 percent of the adult male population, according to government estimates.

    http://historyofalcoholanddrugs.typepad.com/alcohol_and_drugs_history/taiwan/

    My advice to you is to find a better teacher, one that’s more honest!

  34. BruceM says:

    Red watery eyes are enough to convict someone of DWI, take away their driver’s license for 6-12 months and put them in jail for up to a year, so surely it’s enough to suspend a kid from school. It would be anomolous if that would not be enough to suspend a kid from school.

    Do they ever force students to take sobriety tests at schools? I’m sure they do, I just can’t recall hearing about it being done (where refusal to take the test = automatic suspension – along with failing the test… “zero tolerance” for the children!).

  35. Just me. says:

    “zero tolerance” for the children! Punish those kids for being…kids! Make them pay for thier horrendous crimes…er youthful indescretions?:\ Make sure they never do it again…or become.. :\ President :S . Little monsters… (sarcasim)

  36. Ty Palmer says:

    My hope is that when people vote yes on Prop 19 to regulate, tax, and control cannabis in 2010 in California, we can begin to truly heal ourselves as a nation and come together under the shared goal of no underage drug use, and a concerted national effort to aid our fellow man in the struggle with all drug abuse. Education will follow, true education from people who have experienced the drugs and know what is harmful and what is not, what is dangerous and what is not, and when draconian punitive prohibition methods are more damaging to people than marijuana could ever be. Our shared knowledge will be our national gain.

    Ty Palmer :: Founder

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