A Fairfax student was suspended for two weeks from school for taking her birth control pills at lunch time. The pills were prescribed by the teen’s doctor and approved by her mother. According to school policies, the student’s pills should have been kept in the school clinic with the nurse.
Fairfax County Schools’ safe and drug-free youth program makes carrying any pills in the backpack or in the packets a serious offence.
All Northern Virginia Public School Systems have a very strict NO DRUGS policy – at least on the school grounds. Most schools have zero-tolerance policies on drugs.
No Drugs policy includes over-the-counter drugs, prescription drugs, and pretend drugs found in student lockers or pockets.
While the stringent rules may seem excessive and severe at times, those rules are designed to create a school environment conducive to learning, to protect the students/minors from potential drug abuse, to ensure the enforceability of the policy, and to simply make school life more manageable and orderly. It also protects the schools from legal liability.
In Virginia, all school systems must comply with state code. In general, students face expulsion if they bring to school any “controlled substance” or addictive drug regulated by the federal government. In Maryland, schools systems are allowed to set their own drug policies. In the District, prescription medications without a doctor’s order is confiscated in school.
The student and her mother maintain that the decision to take birth-control pills is personal and should not draw the same punishment as bringing a gun to school would, and that putting the birth-control pills in the same category as illegal drugs and handguns stigmatizes responsible behavior.
SOURCE: The Washington Post
