The Sharpie: A Dangerous Gateway Drug

It’s rare that I find good cause to praise anything that secular humanist public schools do, but in this case a school might just have saved lives.  So a round of applause is certainly in order.

Adams School District 50 is defending its decision to punish a third grader for sniffing a Sharpie marker.

In druggie circles, the practice is called “huffing.”  It’s where common household chemicals and even marking pen fumes are concentrated and inhaled.  It can lead to intoxication, nausea, euphoria, vomiting and even masturbation or death.

Harris used a black Sharpie marker to color a small area on the sleeve of his sweatshirt. A teacher sent him to the principal when she noticed him smelling the marker and his clothing.

“It smelled good,” Harris said. “They told me that’s wrong.”

Well no kidding, you stupid kid!  It can destroy your life if not your brain.  Idiot!

Huffers start getting their kicks from marking pens, but soon move on to pouring chemicals such as paint or insecticide or even gasoline into paper bags and inhaling the fumes.  If your kid comes out of the garage looking guilty or confused with paint all around his mouth, you probably have a huffer on your hands.  Get him to treatment immediately, otherwise he’ll likely move on to more dangerous drugs like crack, heroin or even marijuana, the devil’s drug of choice.

“This is really, really, seriously dangerous,” Benisch said.

In his letter suspending the child, Benisch wrote that smelling the marker fumes could cause the boy to “become intoxicated.”

School is no place to be intoxicated or to huff dangerous mind-altering chemicals.  That goes for students as well as teachers.

The principal did the right thing here by throwing the book at this little criminal.  And the quick and forceful action by the school may well deter other potential druggies from going down the same road.  Only losers use drugs.  Winners turn them in.

If your parents, siblings, friends or neighbors are suspected by you of using drugs, you should turn them into the local police and get a reward.  It’s the right thing to do and can be profitable.  And you just might save some lives through your vigilance.

Be a winner and turn criminals into the authorities.

Addendum: Note that in the “Sharpie” ad shown above that the manufacturers know what their product is really used for.  The ad copy encourages users to “Go MENTAL,” a not so subtle reference to huffing the fumes to get high.  Shameless, aren’t they?

— Psycheout