by Paul J. Henderson

The U.S.-led war on drugs has always focused to a large degree on kids and keeping illegal substances away from children. It is tough to argue that drugs – legal or illegal – shouldn’t be kept from kids. Ingesting drugs is detrimental to development and can only hamper the learning process. Because of these possibly self-evident notions the police are taking - and are being handed - ever-increasing access to the young generation and that is bothering some parents and civil libertarians, not to mention the kids themselves. Giving kids a bufferzone to "just be kids" certainly seems well intentioned enough, but increasingly police and anti-drug zealots are focusing their attention on turning schools into arbitrarily designated "drug-free zones". The police-taught D.A.R.E. program, drug-sniffing dogs patrolling school hallways, and the areas surrounding schools deemed "drug-free zones" are the 3-D drug war attack on schools in Canada and the U.S.. British Columbia’s privacy commissioner is currently questioning the privacy issues behind the use of random drug dog searches by school boards in the province. The Executive Director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, Murray Mollard, goes much further: "This is absolutely asinine. The RCMP has to realize that they are part of the problem, not part of the solution. The war on drugs is an abysmal failure."

According to a number of lawyers, parents and critics, surrounding schools (some and not others) with a "drug-free zone" is not only arbitrary and unusual; it has no legal validity.

In Grand Forks, B.C. there is an approximately 10-block circumference surrounding Grand Forks Secondary School that also encompasses Perley Elementary. The proponents of the drug-free zone, here and in similar zones across North America, claim that those caught with illegal substances within the zone will face double and triple the normal penalties. The head of the local RCMP detachment, Sgt. Daryl Little, makes no apologies for the harsh treatment of transgressors caught within the zone. "Are the penalties tough?", Little says regarding the treatment of a recent case involving a young offender, "Damn right they are!" But a number of lawyers and the father of a young offender caught by a teacher with an illegal substance contend that the drug-free zone is not only an arbitrary designation and not only does it constitute cruel and unusual punishment, it doesn’t even have legal validity or relevance.

"It is a frightening thought that special interest groups can come up with these ideas and then have the police subscribe to them," says the father of the young offender, who cannot be named. "The police are becoming the moral arbiters of what we do and I really have a problem with that.... The punishment meted out already was more than adequate. Putting this in front of a judge was ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous!."

The case heard in Grand Forks Court this past summer involved a young offender who was caught in school with a pot brownie. The marijuana content in the brownie - despite being an almost insignificant amount - was then considered a possession issue, but according to the individual’s father, even the judge in the case was baffled by the Crown’s zeal in pursuing a strong conviction. "The judge was obviously on my side," the father says. The Crown prosecutor was sticking to his guns, says the father, but the judge then asked the Crown prosecutor if the young offender didn’t have a ‘deminimus’ defense - in other words, a dismissable quantity. The judge apparently asked the lawyer to drop it three times. In the end the young offender faced a conditional sentence and six months probation. That, of course, was on top of the punishment meted out by the school, not to mention by his embarrassed parents.

He was given a one-week suspension, prohibited from extra-curricular activities until the end of the year, given drug and alcohol counselling and then, when mom and dad got through with him, he was grounded, had his allowance eliminated and was forced to do extra work. "He couldn’t play rugby or go to school dances," the father says, "How do you think that makes a 17-year-old feel? The laundry list of punishment inflicted on the young offender for the miniscule amount of marijuana angers and baffles his father to no end. "As far as the drug-free zone goes, statutes are made by legislature, not by police departments and school districts. This drug-free zone has no legal validity. It has none," he says. Local lawyer Peter Somerville agrees. "The school district and the police are arbitrarily designating an area as drug-free," Somerville says. "Does the issue concern me? Yes, the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act section 10(2)(a)(iii) states that a relevant aggravating factor in sentencing includes a person who traffics or possesses for the purpose of trafficking a substance in or near a school or on or near school grounds, not simple possession of marijuana."

Somerville negotiated with the Crown on behalf of the young offender who was without a lawyer at the time. Somerville is concerned about the school, the police and the Crown acting in cahoots to force the issue of doubling fines in an arbitrarily designated area.

"Is there legal validity?" Somerville asks, "Good question. Where do the school district and RCMP derive authority to arbitrarily designate an area outside of school property as drug-free? My guess is that young offenders in the drug-free zone are treated harsher than adults in criminal court."

Sgt. Little doesn’t disagree. "You know what? You make some bad choices. They’ve got to learn," Little says, "It was a bad choice to make. Did he receive a harsher penalty than an adult would have in criminal court? Probably." But others in the legal community...

Continued...

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