<p>Gotta love how the coach says that he must have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time because he was a great scorer. He knows for a fact that the kid wasn’t a drug dealer because he was so great to have on the team.</p>
<p>Were most of these kids on the lacrosse team? </p>
<p>The most recent arrest, linked by jonri, was of a student at Haverford College. Isn’t that an extremely selective school?</p>
<p>A bunch of guys selling pot. Big whoop.</p>
<p>The two ringleaders were lax players at the Haverford school. They also coached youth lax in the area. </p>
<p>They were also caught with cocaine, hashish and ecstasy in addition to pot. And guns and cash. If that were my kid I would not be thinking “big whoop”</p>
<p>Very scary! Pot today, heroine & prescription narcotics tomorrow…with pot becoming legal, wouldn’t they have to switch their product up to satisfy the masses? I still believe that pot is a gateway drug!</p>
<p>I came across a young man (not my son, thankfully) who imported drugs to his prep school in hollowed out peanut butter jars. They can be quite creative. At the elite private boys’ school in Dallas that Xiggi attended (and my son, for awhile) some of the high school boys formed a buying cartel where one kid would make the buy each month. That limited the risk of getting caught somewhat. Then the buyer would sell to the others. Everyone screamed and yelled about the drug problem at the public schools (which were truly terrible)but my son said it was much worse in the private schools where the kids had more $$$$.<br>
I grew up in that part of Philadelphia…</p>
<p>I dont think minors should be using any drugs without their medical professionals prescription.
But marijuana isnt a gateway drug anymore than wine is.</p>
<p>If you’re talk about maintaining an equitable society then society needs to meet out justice fairly and equitably. Otherwise, the people will soon have no faith in societal standards and will eventually ignore them or just adapt their own without regard to any impact upon anyone else. I fear to live in a world l like that. We’re already halfway there.</p>
<p>I’m more concerned about the guns than the pot. It sounded as if the cocaine was in a quantity for personal use, not selling. I have no idea how much Ecstasy that is, comparatively speaking.</p>
<p>The statement by the prosecutor or lead investigator or whoever she was was, IMHO, wildly exaggerated. Talking about people being “poisoned” and “hooked.” Sue, if these guys were moving significant amounts of cocaine. But it doesn’t sound like it. </p>
<p>I strongly disagree with selling anything to HS students. But pot to college students? Can’t get excited about it, sorry.</p>
<p>f you’re talking about maintaining an equitable society then society needs to meet out justice fairly and equitably. Otherwise, the people will soon have no faith in nominal societal standards and will eventually ignore them or just adhere to their own priorities and self-interest without regard to the impact upon anyone else. I fear to live in a world like that. We’re already halfway there, it seems at times. </p>
<p>Seems to me the article states this was a four month investigation. The one kid stated he was making $1000 a week selling pot alone. They were supplying coke, hash oil, MDMA, ecstasy and pot to others who would sell it to your high schooler. </p>
<p>Yes, this is a big deal. Just because they only had a certain amt of drugs that day doesn’t mean that’s all they ever had.</p>
<p>Good grief, you guys, this IS big deal. How do you not see that?</p>
<p>This is distribution and selling on school grounds.</p>
<p>We are also having a huge problem with heroin in this area. It’s killing a number of kids. I am sure heroin was not their first drug of use but its extremely cheap and easy to get. </p>
<p>These guys were not selling heroin but they were getting kids invested in using drugs. Heroin, here, is a likely next step. It’s cheaper than pot.</p>
<p>Thank you, sax. </p>
<p>The real issue is we have been sold on the idea that drug crimes are the purview of inner city drug gangs, the ones that go around shooting each other up and so forth we see on the news. Part of the reason they make a big deal is the assumption drug dealers are never well off, privileged kids (which is idiotic, but that is perceptions). Had this been two kids from an inner city high school, or two kids from the inner city on scholarship, people would have nodded their heads and said “of course, what do you expect?”. The reality of prep schools is some kids do things like deal drugs, it happened at the prep school my S went to, two children of a very well off local family were dealing drugs in school and in the area…so it happens. </p>
<p>And yes, drug penalties are often disproportionate, a low level street dealer with a couple of bags of crack can get more severe penalties than a dealer working the rich and beautiful crowd selling powdered cocaine. These kids will probably go in front of a judge and get probation and such, in part because being upper class, they will be assumed to be ‘kids who have made a mistake’, rather than hardened criminals, since they ‘come from good families’ and such (so did Robert Chambers, aka the notorious ‘preppy killer’). </p>
<p>As far as the AR15 goes, it is not a hunting rifle, hunting rifles are generally single shot bolt action weapons. The AR15 is a semi automatic, which means it has a clip that contain anywhere from around 10 bullets, to clips have 30 or more bullets in it, and even though they are not full automatic, can shoot quite a few rounds in very short order (among other things, AR15’s are grossly inaccurate compared to a hunting rifle. Put it this way, AR15’s are commonly picked up off the street when they bust drug dealers or raid drug dealer’s apartments and such, and it isn’t because dealers like to go deer hunting, it is because they are semi automatic and can fire a lot of shots quickly, and also reload quickly. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It wouldn’t be a gateway drug if it was legal. The whole idea about a drug being a “gateway” drug is that it’s widely available, and relatively low impact but breaks the trust that the government is only regulating stuff that’s bad for you, if the user believes that weed isn’t bad for you. Like how we don’t call caffeine a gateway drug, it wouldn’t make sense to call weed a gateway drug if it was legal. </p>
<p>That said, I don’t believe in the whole “gateway” drug thing myself. If someone was gonna shoot heroin they were gonna shoot heroin regardless if they smoked weed as a kid or not. And it’s not like kids smoking weed are about the go shoot up heroin because they get bored of weed. But that’s another discussion. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The law says you can’t drive more than 70 on the freeway. How many of us have done that before? You drive 90 on the freeway and don’t get pulled over, someone else drives 90 on the freeway and does and gets an expensive ticket. </p>
<p>No one believes in the law absolutely because it’s dumb. People follow laws they think are just and/or are well enforced, the ignore laws they think are unjust and/or not well enforced. It’s too late, the reality that you’re saying will exist if penalties are not uniformly doled out already exists. </p>
<p>The law is the law. PERIOD.</p>
<p>If you choose not to follow the law then you risk getting caught and being punished. People break laws when they believe the consequences of being caught are not as great as the reward from breaking them. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.samhsa.gov/data/NSDUH/2012SummNatFindDetTables/NationalFindings/NSDUHresults2012.htm”>http://www.samhsa.gov/data/NSDUH/2012SummNatFindDetTables/NationalFindings/NSDUHresults2012.htm</a></p>
<p>Above is a very recent drug survey</p>
<p><a href=“Price and availability making heroin drug of choice | KSL.com”>Price and availability making heroin drug of choice | KSL.com;
and here is just one article about cost of drugs</p>
<p>“…Police say they’ve seen kids as young as 13 and 14 addicted to heroin, a drug that costs significantly less than its prescription counterpart OxyContin and can be cheaper than marijuana or spice.”</p>
<p>A few years ago, my son’s childhood friend was expelled senior year from his private prep school for dealing drugs. I know the kid, knew the kid, the parents, the family, his friends though he was not around my son any more as they went off to separate high schools. My son was appalled that the young man was labeled a drug dealer. The kid got friendly with some older college kids who could get him some decently priced pot or whatever (I think it was pot) and make it easy to get. No having to deal with going to some strange area and dealing with a stranger. So the kid bought some stuff, enough to stash for a while and also spread the word and bought for friends. As my son said, “he didn’t make a dime from this”. And I told him that made him a bad business man, but a dealer, nonetheless. </p>
<p>Now these men in this thread made this into a “massive” business, but there are those who do get busted like my son’s friends who do not think of themselves as dealers in the least They don’t get it as to how dealing is defined (usually by quantity) So one sees dealers from all walks of life. And the most dangerous ones of all to most of us are not the ones in the 'hoods, selling on the streets, but the one who used to go, or goes to your kids school, the one you had in a car pool, took to birthday parties, had in your house and that you really liked a whole lot The one you’d love to marry your daughter off to in the future. They can infiltrate the school and give kids easy access to drugs. Few kids are going to just trot down to a drug neighborhood with cash and seek the down and dirty dealers. Nope not that stupid. But someone they already know is selling some stuff, well, that makes it safe and easy. They are the ones who usually bring the drugs around, though not in the systematic way these kids in this story have done.</p>
<p>Some years ago, at a local catholic high school, some kids did not wake up after first period class bell rang Sound asleep and not rousable to much of a degree. The police and EMT were called and school dismissed as a suspicion of some gas leak or other issue was there. Well, come to find out, two kids sold logs (?) of Xanax to a bunch of stupid freshmen who immediatly took the stuff. Why kids who have trouble staying awake in class anyways would take an anti anxiety type drug for middleaged folks, I don’t know I think they would have take strychnine if they were told it was cool. It made the front page of our local paper, the two dealers were expelled and sent to rehab and the other kids to a less intense rehab and were put on probation at the school. </p>
<p>So no surprise. Just sad that this is so pervasive and that these men who had every advantage, could be doing so much should be drug dealers poaching on their own. Very sad.</p>
<p>
I like this. I do. I do not agree with the speed limit. I break that law frequently. The same can be applied to my views on the illegality of pot. Legalize pot for goodness sake. </p>
<p>What these guys did I do not agree with. They targeted the teens and adults in their area. If I was a parent, I’d find that threatening. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The point is that no one cares what the law is. I’m not saying they shouldn’t be punished for breaking the law, just that punishing them lightly or heavily doesn’t do anything to influence or discourage others. We don’t need to worry about some terrible thing happening in the future because people don’t respect the law, because that’s what’s going on today. </p>