The student charged is a fourth grader and distributed the drug to classmates. Four students who received the cocaine ingested it - some orally, others through their noses. They were hospitalized, and so was a fifth grader who did not ingest the cocaine.
According to an ABC News story, parents were told what happened by a voicemail and a letter sent home with all the students.
The names and ages of the children involved have not been released but the school that this incident occurred in, Thompson Elementary School, runs from preschool through fifth grade - which puts children ages three through about eleven or twelve in the school.
As a substitute teacher, I see and hear a lot of crazy things that I couldn't imagine "us" - you know "us" old-timers, the kids of the 90's (oh man, we're just soooo old, right?!) ... even knowing about at the age that kids today know about, but this is absolutely insane. I just can't understand how this fourth grader could get his hands on cocaine. My thoughts immediately go to his parents. It's the only thing that makes sense. I mean I'm not saying the parents willingly handed the child the crack, but it must have been lying around the house or they were users or dealers or whatnot and the kid thought, "Hey, Why not?"
On top of that, I know kids experiment and stuff with drugs but haven't these other kids that ingested the cocaine had any type of drug awareness education. I mean these kids skipped way past the gateway drugs. They skipped sniffing glue and markers, and huffing paint, even smoking a point behind the school (I had no clue where to score some reef in the fourth grade) ... and went straight for the hard stuff because it was there? That doesn't make sense to me either. It just seems like one big story of innocence lost.
I say bring back the creepy 80's and 90's after-school Anti-Drug PSA's because clearly D.A.R.E. is no longer working (well, these kids were younger than the general age when kids start D.A.R.E. classes!)
Because this PSA would creep the urge to try crack right out of me.
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