Requiring Parents to Send Children to Gang- and Drug-Infected Middle and High Schools is State Sanctioned Child Abuse
Parents of tweens and teens: CASA’s 15th Annual Back-to-School Survey indicates that the odds are increasing that the middle or high school your children are going to is drug infected (a place where drugs are used, kept or sold), especially if it is a public school.
Are you going to do something about it or just accept it as an inevitable experience your child has to go through because “that’s just the way things are today”?
If you heard that your child’s classroom and school building were infected with asbestos, wouldn’t you demand that the school authorities certify that the asbestos was cleaned out before you sent you child to school for five or more hours each day?
Are you more concerned about your child breathing asbestos dust than you are about your child drinking, smoking, popping pills, using marijuana, or experimenting with drugs like acid, ecstasy, meth, cocaine, and heroin?
That’s the question you’ve got to answer because here’s what CASA’s 2010 Survey reveals:
• Twenty-seven percent of public school children attend schools infected with gangs and drugs. Compared to teens at gang- and drug-free schools, the 5.7 million teens at these schools are five times likelier to use marijuana, three times likelier to drink, twelve times likelier to smoke, and five times likelier to be among friends and classmates who use illegal drugs like acid, ecstasy, meth, cocaine and heroin.
• One in three middle schoolers say that their schools are drug infected, a 39 percent jump over the past couple of years. Ten percent of the kids at these drug-infected middle schools admit they smoke pot, while none of those surveyed at drug-free middle schools use marijuana.
• Sixty-six percent of high school students say their schools are drug infected; continuing a steady increase in drug-infected high schools since 2006, when 51 percent of high school students said they attended drug-infected schools.
These increases in the number of drug-infected schools is a trajectory for tragedy for millions of 12- to 17-year olds in our nation because kids in drug-infected schools are much likelier to smoke, drink, get drunk, and use drugs than those in drug-free schools.
Hopefully these dismaying survey results will change the hear-see-speak-no-drugs mentality of so many public school administrators, from the U.S. Department of Education down through state school commissioners to local school board members. They all bemoan the number of dropouts and the low graduation rates, but they never mention that the bulk of those dropouts are kids with drug and alcohol problems or whose parents have such problems.
Indeed, if you want to know one of the reasons why so many public schools are failing our children, consider the difference the CASA survey reveals between public schools and private and religious schools: 46 percent of teens at public schools say there are gangs at their schools compared to only 2 percent of teens at private and religious schools. In other words, public schools are 23 times likelier to be gang infected than private and religious schools.
Where there are gangs, there are likelier to be drugs. Not surprisingly, 47 percent of public school students said their school was drug infected compared to six percent of private and religious school children.
The drug-free school gap between public schools and private and religious schools is up sharply from its narrowest point in a decade. In the 2001 CASA teen survey 62 percent of public schools and 79 percent of private and religious school students said they attended drug-free schools; in this year’s survey, 43 percent of public school students and 78 percent of private and religious school students say they attend drug-free schools, widening the drug-free school gap from 17 points to 35 points.
Most adults do not encounter gangs and drugs at work each day. Why do we force millions of our children to encounter gangs and drugs at school each day? If adults faced gangs and drugs in their factories and offices they would protest, call the police, and if that failed, change jobs. Yet we expect millions of our children to return to the same school, day after day, and face the menace of gangs and drugs.
Placing our young teens and pre-teens in an environment where drinking and drugging are common is state sanctioned child abuse, since we know that the earlier a child begins to smoke, drink or use drugs, the likelier that child is to become addicted. States require parents to send their children to school; in some states it is a crime if parents fail to do so. These states have an obligation to provide safe and drug-free schools. Requiring parents to send 12- to 17-year olds–and even younger children–to drug- and gang-infected schools is an outrageous misuse of government power–and a mandate that no parent should be forced to respect.
Thank you Joe Califano. I could not agree more that mandating that a child of any age attend a drug and gang infected school is an outrageous misue of government power.
Now how do we organize to insure that our children are never put in that situation?
The question of “would we send our child to a classroom and or school building infected with asbestos” illustrated to me how complacent and or desensitized we have become to the problems of drugs and gangs in our schools and community. What does a family do that can’t afford private school? I don’t believe public education is a loss cause. The data presented here is as loud and as startling as a severe weather horn. Now that the alarm has been sounded - it is our responsibility to move to safety. Our public schools need to be drug and gang free.
This is perfect example of protecting the teachers union (NEA) and not the children. The children have to find a place to belong and feel that they matter. Since their homes and schools are not safe places, they gravitate to gangs and use drugs to medicate their pain the only way they know how.
Here are my fives elements to a solution.
1. Abolish the NEA.
2. Provide parents with vouchers to allow them to choose the school they want their children to attend.
3. Allow discipline back in schools. Zero tolerance for gangs, violence and drugs.
4. Mandatory parental involvement and responsibility. If the child does not follow the rules, the parent has to come in and meet with the teacher, etc. Parents need to be parents. There are very few bad children, mostly bad parents who spend more time on their jobs, their drugs/alcohol and other self absorbed functions than spending time with their children and being parents.
5. Stop all of the political correctness garbage and teach accurate and true history, math, English etc., instead of the garbage classes.
Joe Califano is 100 percent right! His perceptive message should be mandatory reading for all school authorities who currently are being brainwashed by the false messages of professional drug legalization lobbyists who dominate the internet and media coverage of school drug/violence issues.
In addition to being excellent documentation of current school drug problems, Mr. Califano’s article provides the perfect introduction for two other recent drug prevention documents that together provide the key for how to end this nation’s long-term schoolchild drug health crisis:
1. The U.S. drug czar office’s 2010 National Drug Control Strategy categorically confirming that the nation’s drug crisis is a national health issue and that drug abuse/addiction is a treatable disease that needs to be addressed by public health strategies.
2. The U.S. Education Department’s new study confirming the effectiveness of Random Student Drug Testing as an effective school health-protection program for deterring, preventing and treating schoolchild drug/alcohol abuse.
Teen drug abuse often is the starting point for addiction leading to the massive problems Mr. Califano cites, and often concluding as one of nearly 3,000 drug-induced (mostly overdose) U.S. deaths MONTHLY as documented by the most recent CDC mortality report.
Parents can help protect their children by forwarding these combined messages to their local school officials and demanding changes in current failing school drug prevention policies that are continuing to perpetuate this preventable health crisis among their community’s schoolchildren.
Thanks to the patriotic leadership of Joe Califano and his CASA staff for jerking the cover off one of the most shameful failures of public officials in the history of mankind; the massive betrayal of parents and their kids to the benefit of the drug traffickers by turning a blind eye to the preventable conditions cited by Mr. Califano.
We need this kind of awareness in North Carolina. I am currently attempting to have my children reassigned to a safer public school due to concerns about the amount of gang activity and drug use at their current school. However, I’m being sent through a lot of red tape. I fear my only recourse is home school which will be virtually impossible considering the fact that I work two jobs. Something has to be done about the growing gang and drug problem in public schools.
This is a great approach to the problem–child abuse! There is no parent anti-drug movement any more. It will take such a movement to change the drug culture. The drug legalization lobby is much stronger and downplays the harm of drugs. Schools, parents, and children are all to blame. Public Middle schools and high schools should drug test and identify early users and get them help. Otherwise parents don’t even know because kids hide their using and there is a culture of silence. Schools should focus on and if necessary eliminate high-risk users–they sell drugs at school and spread drug use. Special schools that treat teenagers with problems would be more cost effective than prisons later on. We should not forget alcohol abuse is even more rampant than drug abuse among teenagers.
I agree with Secretry Califano. He and CASA have OUTSTANDING knowledge about all substance abuse issues!
Loren Buddress
One of the solutions to helping rid our schools of alcohol and other drugs is to employ drug sniffing dogs and breathalyzers on a regular basis. This will send the message to students, teachers and support staff alike that a given school district is serious about erradicating the use of illegal substances, including alcohol by those younger than 21. It’s all about saving lives and preserving a safe environment to learn and grow. Only through zero tolerance with significant consequences will the word get out that our children and their safety is of the utmost importance, especially in our schools.