The NDPA notes that there is more drug use in USA schools since the legalisation of marijuana in two states. This item from Australia on drug use amongst students is shocking; in the UK we need to continue to keep firm drug laws and to promote drug prevention to our youth in order that the same situation does not occur in our schools.

THE Gold Coast region is the booming drug school capital of Queensland, according to confidential data. Exclusive statistics provided to the Bulletin show the number of students excluded from southeast district schools have more than doubled in the past three years. Those figures threaten to triple this year as the region — from the tourist strip, west to Beaudesert and north to Beenleigh and Logan — overtakes Brisbane’s combined northside and southside suburbs for young “stoners”. Police and welfare workers are convinced the Coast’s alarming youth drug trend is fuelled by the economic downturn. Unable to get work in the construction or hospitality industries, former students who began their dope habit back in the early years of secondary school are now returning to their old campuses to deal drugs. “They have fallen back on the only commerce they know — the drug trade,” a police source said. Welfare workers are aware of principals in the Beenleigh region who are banning ex-students from returning to the grounds in a bid to stop school-gate drug deals.. Documents obtained by Right To Information laws reveal many of the offenders are in Year 8, and more than 250 pages of “suspension” reports show increasing numbers of them are bullying females. They use either their mobile phones or Facebook to obtain “the happy drug” from dealers in houses near their schools. In a shocking incident, a student sold 160 tablets, suspected to be speed. Another student who took the tablets overdosed and was taken to hospital, authorities writing that his life was placed at risk. Other reports show students obtain drugs from dealers at Pacific Fair and other shopping centres, skate parks and train stations. However, most students are aware of the CCTV cameras at major business centres, and prefer carparks, skateparks, drains, hidden areas under bridges or bushland near schools to set up their bongs. The young dealers boast about selling weed for as little as $5. A bag of pot is worth $60. Police keeping watch on hotspot schools have found female students smoking an hour before classes. When a female student refused to get inside the police car, an officer was forced to “put her in a wrist lock” as they struggled to get to the deputy principal’s office. Student intelligence being fed to welfare workers suggests criminals are buying or renting homes near schools so “stoners” can gain easy access during lunch breaks. School suspension reports show students arriving at school preparing to party. They bring water-pipe bongs, grinders, clip-seal bags, scissors, pliers and garden hoses. Boys are hiding “the happy drug” in their shoes and toothpick holders, while girls place lighters down their bras. Glassy-eyed, barely able to stand, sometimes with their heads resting on their desks, they are nonchalant about their drug habit interfering with their education.
Asked why she squatted on a netball court to smoke weed, a female student told her deputy principal: “I’ve had a bad week.” A student who arrived at a new school after being excluded from another for drug-related activities brought “weed” on his second day. Before excluding him, his new principal told him: “You admitted to bringing a lunch box-size container of marijuana to school on the second day of attendance at our high school and daily thereafter. “You admitted to supply marijuana … you admitted to asking a student to hide your stash. The behaviour is so serious that suspension would be inadequate to deal with this behaviour.”

Source: www.goldcoast.com.au 13th March 2013