Minor Drug Use
During my first year here at Exeter, a number of my preconceptions and initial perceptions of this school were proven dead wrong. One of my ideas that contributed to Exeter being a utopia was that there would be little to no drinking and minimal drug use. This was not what I thought before I arrived. It was only until I actually settled in here that I came to the notion that barely anyone smoked pot and practically no one drank. But then I came to the disappointing understanding that I was, and still am, indeed a prep who got told nothing at all.
In fact, it was not until I started seeing DC cases come one after the other that I recognized that the students here, despite being more intelligent, are not terribly different than those you would find at a public high school. We still smoke, drink and have sex, just like any other student body would. As it is an integral part of high school all across the nation, action needs to be taken on the issue of how minor drug usage is dealt with when used on school grounds. If a prosecutor so chooses, they may wish to charge any student who uses any illegal drug on school property to be charged with a felony.
Smoking marijuana, among doing other drugs on a school campus can lead to a felony, jail time and a permanently stained record. So why would people even smoke pot if the consequences are so severe? Other than self-coping and peer pressure, teens in particular do drugs because of boredom and rebellion. However, this does not mean that as a nation we can have a system which upholds laws that are set out to attack, not help and guide high school drug users. I can only attest to the events that have happened this year, but just by being here for almost a whole school year I have seen what drinking a bottle of beer and smoking a joint can do to you and your future. Although full immunity should not be given to anyone, the law should not treat students who have done drugs so harshly that it can ruin their futures. Teens experiment and take stupid risks. That should not go against us and take down all of the potential we have by putting a big mark right on our record.
On the other hand, schools and states should not be giving people under 18 a free pass to smoke and drink as they please. There needs to be recognition among advocates for looser drug laws of what drugs and alcohol can do to anyone’s life, let alone one of a smart, young teenager at our school for example. This leads to a dilemma: should we reform our laws to lessen the punishment for doing drugs on school grounds or keep our laws strict? If we start to reform, things will only snowball. This can be seen today with the changes being made in laws regarding marijuana. The legalization started out in one state as a test and now it is spreading like wildfire. So should we be threatening high schoolers just like the ones at Exeter with strict laws that can ruin their future? No. Although it should remain prohibited, the experimentation of weed among teenagers cannot be viewed as dangerous if it is kept under control by using rehabilitation methods, not punishment. We should not stand for more students with high potential to be dragged down by dumb decisions made when they were 16. This destruction of futures has to stop.