TheAgitator.com
Insanitized
Monday, January 28th, 2008A 14-year-old boy in Lewisville, Texas was arrested, booked, and fingerprinted last October for sniffing his teacher’s hand sanitizer.
Mr. Ortiz said the family’s ordeal began Oct. 19, when his son picked up a bottle of hand sanitizer from the desk of his fifth-period reading teacher at Killian Middle School in Lewisville. He rubbed the gel on his hands and smelled it.
In the view of school officials, the boy "inhaled heavily," according to Mr. Ortiz, who said his son sniffed the cleanser "because it smelled good."
The youth was sent to the principal’s office, and the Lewisville police officer assigned to the school began investigating.
[...]
The teen was required to serve a brief in-school suspension and was also fingerprinted and photographed at the Lewisville Police Department. He returned to regular classes at the school, including one with the teacher whose sanitizer he sniffed.
Mr. Ortiz said he believed the matter was over until Tuesday when he was served with a petition charging his son with delinquency for inhaling the hand sanitizer to "induce a condition of intoxication, hallucination and elation."
He said he couldn’t believe that his son would have to go to court for smelling hand sanitizer. "I think it’s ludicrous," said Mr. Ortiz, who blames overzealous police and prosecutors for initially pursuing the case.
Joni Eddy, assistant police chief in Lewisville, said Friday that hand sanitizer has become a popular inhalant. "That is the latest thing to huff," she said.
The local prosecutor had the common sense to not pursue the charges.
What next all students and faculty must donn emergancy breathing apparatuses in cases of extreme flatulence?
Where is the common sense?
“That is the latest ” is local drug warrior parlance for “I heard about some kid doing this once.”
A google search of huffing hand sanitizer yields stories primarily about this specific arrest, and lots of stories about drinking, not huffing, sanitizer, and many stories about huffing some kind of much stronger sanitizer/disinfectant. So I call shenanigans on this “latest thing”
My favorite comment from Snopes discussion board concerning this story: http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?p=488640
“I guess I’m an addict as well. When I use a nice smelling lotion or hand sanitizer on my hands I often sneak a sniff now and then. Is there a program for this I wonder?”
I think I would attempt to get the principal responsible for calling the police removed. I would fill the next school board meeting with irate parents and when I was done, they would know the true meaning of zero tolerance.
So that Eddy woman, she’s just a liar, right? I mean, no one is actually sniffing hand sanitizer to get high, or did people who use inhalants just get even dumber?
http://www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=1&f=5&t=664786
This fellow had his fifth-grade son suspended from school for three days for using a pen with the word “Glock” on it. (The father is a law enforcement officer; he should have some respect for the rules.)
People who use inhalants are relatively stupid to begin with, they’d probably try to huff water if you told them they would get high.
The justification Eddy gives sounds nearly as stupid. If drinking ethyl alcohol is legal, why is inhaling it illegal? Sounds like she’s trying to prevent her department from looking asinine.
If the kid had dumped the hand cleaner into his lunch bag and then tried to sniff the contents of the bag, then he might deserve a suspension. If the infraction isn’t serious enough for a physical suspension or expulsion, why is the school even calling the police?
Well then the school should be held accountable, for THEY provided it did they not? They just kept this dangerous, potential drug out in plain sight for anyone to come by and smell? I think a SWAT team should burst into the school and terrorize the teachers and staff at gunpoint for a few hours.
These are the idiots you have TEACHING your children.
Clearly, the hand sanitizer should have a warning:
CAUTION: Heavy exposure to vapors may cause headache, vomiting, seizures, loss of consciousness, and arrest by clueless fucktards.
When a teenager rubs lotion all over his hands, whipes it up against his face, breathes in deeply, gets a cheesy grin and chuckles from his classmates, it’s actually reverse peer pressure as they aknowledge what a stupid thing it is to do and is actually making FUN of the process. You know, like being a DORK and mocking the LOSERS who actually do it.
In true keeping with a zero tolerance police I would expect that the outraged parents now demand the teacher be fired for bringing the tempting substance to school, the principal be fired for anything less and armed guards posted at each door to check and make sure there isn’t any remnant of toothpaste crusting around a childs mouth. It could be mistaken for sexual byproduct triggering a massive manhunt for an imaginary pedophile.
Someone could make a mint making stickers saying “This is not a weapon”, “This is not an inhalant”, “This is not a hallucinogen”, etc for school supplies. Maybe a whole line of stuff like lunch boxes saying “This is not a terrorist device”, Notebooks having “This is not a seductive icon” and cigar boxes saying “No cigars were ever in this box”…
Then you can promote burkhas as the ultimate school uniform. Man, I thought Pink Floyd’s vision of school was frightening….
If you can’t afford private school you’re forced to send your child to public school. Then you have to suffer the likes of these idiots.
If this were my son, I’d put him in private school, even if I had to work two jobs to afford it.
Honestly, I wonder if private schools offer less insanity than this public one. Of course, they’d have to worry about losing $$$ in enrollment, but the state always meddles with education….
This is your brain…..this is your brain with an educator’s degree…..duuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhh.
Who doesn’t sniff it! It smells good and is not intoxicating at the level described!! More wanna be MD’s or cops? These busy bodies need to learn about leaving other people alone!
Who doesn’t sniff it! It smells good and is not intoxicating, at the level described!! More wanna be MD’s or cops? These busy bodies need to learn about leaving other people alone!
SORRY everybody! (about the double post!)
What is there, like 2 oz of alcohol in one of those bottles? You don’t get a buzz from sniffing a glass of whiskey. Or using Windex.
This is just one more example of the idiocy of our public officials and so called educaters these days. What’s next, suspension/getting busted for picking your nose?
What’s with the hostility toward teachers? It is the administrators and school boards that create the insane policies of zero tolerance and the like.
Zeb - I’m guessing that there wasn’t an administrator hanging around to see this guy smell his hands, so it must have been the teacher that turned him in. Without teachers to enforce them it doesn’t matter how many ridiculous zero tolerance policies administrators invent.
Exactly Matt. Some dumbass teacher (and there are PLENTY of good ones…most in fact) took it upon his/herself to check his her brain at the door and it looks like everyone else in the chain of command all the way to the cops did the same. Can you even get high from sniffing hand sanitizer? That’s a new one on me.
Good thing folks involved in education when I was young weren’t like this teacher or how many of us would have ended up suspended for smelling the newly mimiographed <(sp?) test papers?
OOooh… the smell of fresh mimeograph. You probably could get high off of that sweet scent.
14yr old arrested, fingerprinted for smelling hand sanitizer | CommentURL.com…
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Mr. Ortiz said he believed the matter was over until Tuesday when he was served w…
It wasn’t “common sense” of the prosecutors. They actually said the only reason they dropped the charges was because the statute was worded so as to not apply. In other words, the prosecutor admits nothing was wrong with the charges, only that they would not stick. They are saving face and acting like they were completely in the right the whole time, and the ONLY reason the kid got off is becuase of the law.
This has NOTHING to do with “common sense of the prosecutor”.
http://clintjcl.wordpress.com/2008/01/29/links-for-2008-01-29/