School shooting: It’s when, not if.

(Police address to School Trustees Annual Conference)

Police are pushing for schools to implement an emergency response strategy in the event of a shooting similar to those that have happened overseas.

On radio today, police were interviewed and this media release suddenly become the “P” [methamphetamine] problem… [yet another ‘meth-con’?] sad but true! / Blair

The New Zealand School Trustees Association (NZSTA) holds its annual conference in Christchurch from tomorrow and police say it is a good opportunity to discuss the realities of a shooting.

“Like it or not, it’s not a matter of whether a shooting could happen in a school, but more of a matter of when,” Superintendent Bruce Dunstan said.Mr Dunstan, commander of the police national tactical group, said such an event could involve anything from a person carrying a firearm to someone shooting one or more people.

While schools had plans for emergencies such as earthquakes, flooding and fires, few – if any – were prepared for an armed incident.

He said police expectations of boards of trustees in terms of emergency preparedness would be discussed at the conference.”We don’t want to create panic and say it’s going to happen tomorrow, but it is a form of emergency like many others that schools face, and we’d like schools to think about how they’d respond to minimise chaos should they be so unfortunate to be faced with such a scenario.”Just because a school hasn’t faced an emergency before doesn’t mean they can’t plan for it,” Mr Dunstan said.

He said police wanted a standard emergency response ratified so schools and police could be prepared and respond in a consistent way.”If we’re all on the same page it doesn’t matter whether the school is in Invercargill or Whangarei, the response and procedures will be the same for both schools and police.

“It means that on the day schools and students in particular will know how to react.”
Part of the response plan would be to consider how the alarm would be raised and how schools would react.

Police are currently in talks with the Ministry of Education and NZSTA, and want the ministry to make a response plan widely available to schools, who can then decide whether or not to adopt it.The conference will also cover student discipline issues, and issues that arise from complaints to the Ombudsmen’s Office by parents or students about board of trustees’ disciplinary decisions.

(and how many of these complaints will be around the contestable discipline policy and procedure issues relating to unresolved drug policy? /Blair)

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Dogs, Drugs and Deluded Authority

Dogs in schools brings dogs into disrepute.

There is legitimate reason to have grave concerns regarding this practice. Every note in circulation carries residues of cocaine and where cannabis is so widely available even to adults it is all to easy to detect in almost any scenario especially at the near molecular trace levels a well trained dog can detect. This leads to false positives where the consequences, especially amongst peers, let alone determined authority eager to justify its ‘protectionist’ role. Drug Dogs in schools is a dangerous social practice in which the unintended harms are rarely quantified. It portrays ‘students’ as being under suspicion where there should be none, and sends the message to youth that “all their peers are doing it” when this is a false and misleading impression. Of course, authority is reluctant to acknowledge that they are [ever] part of the problem.

I applaud the insight given the comment “how they will handle the pastoral and press issues should a positive identification be found” – this is a very valid concern, made all the more crucial in the case of false positive.

I recommend anyone who shares these concerns to visit the website that covers drug education and youth and the booklet available there written by Prof. Rodney Skager “Beyond Zero Tolerance” for a Safety First approach to education and drugs. http://www.beyondzerotolerance.com

Blair Anderson, Director
Educators For Sensible Drug Policy,
http://www.efsdp.org

http://drugeducationforum.wordpress.com/2008/07/01/solo-attempt-at-battling-drugs/#comment-12102

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Drug tests make no sense – The Age

“Importing a school-based, drug-testing policy that is not backed up by any evidence that it works, and may even be harmful, defies common sense.” – Gino Vumbaca is executive director of the Australian National Council on Drugs.

Drug tests make no sense – Opinion – theage.com.au:

Blair Anderson
http://mildgreens.blogspot.com

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Youth Drug Education Critiqued

“Talking to young people it seems clear that we do need to improve the way we deliver drug education both in and out of school.”

The Children Plan says:

Schools are also in a good position to communicate the right messages and spot alcohol misuse problems early.
Alcohol education in schools must be accurate and effective . We will examine the effectiveness of current delivery arrangements for all drugs education – including alcohol – and act to strengthen them if necessary. (is this suggesting it is OK to lie about other drugs? /Blair)

If Schools are the right place it must be because we have made homes (and parents) the wrong place. Until we empower parents, and tell the truth, drug education is just another wish list.

If DARE was the answer… it was a pretty poor question.

A better and more useful insight into drug education can be gained at http://www.safety1st.org/

Blair Anderson ‹(•¿•)›
Social Ecologist ‘at large’
http://blairformayor.blogspot.com/
http://blair4mayor.com/

ph (643) 389 4065 cell 027 265 7219

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Causation, Correlation, Nicotine, Alcohol & Pot.

Teenagers who smoke are five times more likely to drink and 13 times more likely to use marijuana than those who are not smokers, says a US report issued today.

The report by Columbia University’s National Centre on Addiction and Substance Abuse presented further evidence linking youth smoking to other substance abuse and spotlighted research on how nicotine affects the adolescent brain.

“Teenage smoking can signal the fire of alcohol and drug abuse or mental illness like depression and anxiety,” Joseph Califano, who heads the centre and is a former US health secretary, said in a telephone interview.

The report analysed surveys conducted by the US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and other data on youth smokers. Most smokers begin smoking before age 18.

Smokers aged 12 to 17 were more likely drink alcohol than nonsmokers – 59 per cent compared to 11 per cent, the report found. Those who become regular smokers by age 12 are more than three times more likely to report binge drinking than those who never smoked – 31 per cent compared to nine per cent.

Binge drinking was defined as having five drinks or more in a row.

Asked whether smoking is causing these other behaviours or is just another risky behaviour occurring alongside the others, Califano said, “There’s no question that early teenage smoking is linked to these other things. Now whether it’s causing it or not, I think the jury is probably still out on that.”

Smokers ages 12 to 17 are more apt to meet the diagnostic definition for drug abuse or dependence in the previous year – 26 per cent compared to two per cent, the researchers said.

The report noted that marijuana is the most widely used illicit drug among teenagers, with government data from 2005 showing seven per cent of those aged 12 to 17 used marijuana.

Of these, current cigarette smokers are 13 times more likely to use marijuana than those who do not smoke.

The younger a child starts smoking, the greater the risk, the Columbia team said.

Children who start smoking by age 12 are more than three times more likely to binge on alcohol, nearly 15 times more likely to smoke marijuana and almost seven times more likely to use other drugs such as heroin and cocaine.

Teenagers who smoke also have a higher risk of depression and anxiety disorders, the study found.

The report cited scientific studies showing the nicotine in tobacco products can produce structural and chemical changes in the developing brain that make young people vulnerable to alcohol and other drug addiction and mental illness.

This includes effects on the brain chemicals dopamine and serotonin and changes to brain receptors associated with an increased desire for other addictive drugs.

Reuters

A poverty of reason.

Columbia University’s National Centre on Addiction and Substance Abuse have identified that naughty kids do naughty things…. (see MRC: Medical Rearch Council – News Antisocial behaviour in kids key to alcohol trouble in teens )

Like protecting the ‘vulnerable’ is the American way! Balderdash.
When we [NZ included] arrest someone for pot, we turn an otherwise normal person into a ‘victim’ purportedly to save them from themselves.

This study is evidence ‘pot laws’ protect and arguably, promote early entry into the ‘harmful’, albeit legal drug markets.

Worse, it avoids discussing the social ecology, the set and setting of poverty along with the toxic laws that create both the opportunity/incentive for early entry and rejection of social values/alienation and any subsequent ‘deviancy amplification’.

If pot wasn’t illegal, rather controlled by legal regulation, these kids would in all likelihood come to little or no harm. Isn’t that the desired ‘harm minimising’ outcome here?.

Consider; If ALL youth smoked pot and didn’t binge drink or inhale nicotine, the ‘life time’ prognosis would be entirely different.

As I have said on many occasions, prohibition couldn’t promote pot use to kids more efficiently than if pot was made compulsory.

The best advertising to prevent youth uptake would be to say cannabis is really good for rheumatism and other (over 50) age related stuff. It would turn them right off!

A bit of intellectual honesty is the ‘cure’. /Blair

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Russell Brown sells ‘Anti Violence’ campaign?

From: Kevin O’Connell

I am not sure that Russell Brown has done much for his credibility by being the first guy lining up earnestly on the family commission’s new tv commercials preaching (along with people like radio personality Phil Gifford and half a dozen other ordinary Kiwis) that ‘family violence is not ok’

…the target audience is alienated by government and its do-gooder sycophants and agencies. Russell, how much did they pay you and do you really believe the campaign (telling people to tell on their neighbours) is going to work? ( narc’ing up / blair)

Also you are lining up with government’s feeble and scientifically invalid ‘separate issue’ mentality where NZ social problems are all separate and can be alleviated by funding the various community programmes and government agencies and early intervention initiatives. (which co-incidently is good for the economy, but i digress…)

Labour seem to genuinely believe or are at least implying that family violence

• has nothing to do with ‘youth crime’
• has nothing to do with ‘binge drinking culture’
• has nothing to do with ‘criminality in general’
• has nothing to do with ‘drunk driving’
• has nothing to do with ‘gambling addiction’
• has nothing to do with ‘police corruption’
• has nothing to do with ‘kiwi underclass’
• has nothing to do with ‘drug harm prevention’,
• has nothing to do with ‘matrix of dysfunction’
• has nothing to do with ‘closing the gaps’…

If you get my drift: the problems in NZ are intrinsic and the family commission is looking at things ‘peicemeal’ IE THEY’VE GOT IT WRONG, and the adds cost heaps but aint worth shit.

I guess Russel’s ‘getting older’ and becoming more and more a ‘safe pair of hands’ for authorised media (eg Radio NZ) to get opinions from. How about focusing on the inequity and alienating factor of NZ’s drug laws Russell – you know there’s a lot of bullshit and injustice and hypocrisy goin on in this particular area of the kiwi experience. (i know because i’ve posted your insights to this forum (cclr-public), many a time)

(i do not have Russel’s email so if someone can foward this to him…)

Regards
Kevin O’Connell

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Sex and drug education – does it work?

02/08/2007 –

credit: Communitycare.co.uk – the website for social work and social care professionals

(this is remarkably close to the mildgreen hypothesis – creating in ever younger children the illusion that all their peers are doing it, and they cant b******y wait!. What is fundementally broken are the artificial redlines surrounding ‘age of consent’ issues. We need to enable and not mask self responsibility. /Blair)

Children as young as eight years old are taking drugs. Britain has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe.

So how effective is our sex and drug education?

There are reports in the press this week that according to experts, children as young as six are being treated for addiction to cannabis and are presenting symptoms including paranoia, anxiety, depression and even schizophrenia.

It also emerged last September in Scotland that children aged 10-years-old were dealing drugs.

Dr Michael Fitzpatrick will suggest in Community Care next week that the rise of drug abuse among young children has coincided with the increase of drugs education.

He says: “Gordon Brown has endorsed the fashionable “drugs education”, particularly favouring its extension to primary schools. Here is another policy immune to the evidence of failure.

“Never mind that the spread of drugs education appears to coincide with a dramatic increase in drug taking by school students – the government believes that we need more of the same, extended to even younger children.”

At the same time, Britain has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe despite numerous government initiatives designed to take the problem.

Given that children taking drugs are getting younger and Britain has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Britain, is sex and drug education in Britain effective at educating children or does it merely fuel the curiosity of young people?

Dr Michael Fitzpatrick suggests: “Why not instead teach children something interesting and inspiring, that might give them the truly radical idea that culture and society have more to offer than drug-induced oblivion?”

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