YOU may be a criminal.
In the face of embarrassment over several recent drug arrests of Houston ISD teachers, Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra decided to conduct drug searches of teachers cars all over the district. Searches conducted by drug sniffing dogs in public places, like teacher parking lots, are legal under the constitution even when there is no suspicion of any kind that drugs might be in the parking lot. Once a dog"alerts" to a car, that provides the police with reasonable suspicion to conduct an actual search of the interior of the car.
A parking lot dog search in the teacher's lot of a highly decorated elementary school, one car owned by a beloved and individually decorated 59 year old art teacher turned up a baggie containing two Xanax pills. The teacher was arrested, placed on administrative leave, and is now trying to defend herself. The story is here.
I bring this up because it presents an opportunity to restate something many people need to hear: prescription drugs are illegal drugs unless you personally have a prescription.
The teacher in this articles actually claims she knows nothing about the pills, and since other family members also drove this car, that could be true. But I have talked to many people in my career who do not fully understand the difference between "legal" and "illegal" drugs, a confusion echoed in the comments to the article.
Leftover medication prescribed to one family member may not legally be used or possessed by another family member. The same is true of friends - if you throw your back out, it is illegal for you to take pain pills leftover from when your buddy threw his back out last year. It is okay for you to have medication in your possession that is prescribed to someone else, as long as it is in a container propery labeled by the pharmacy, but if you carry it around in a baggie so that you can take it later,that becomes an illegal act.
Leftover prescription medication should be thrown out, not shared with others. If you take prescription medication that was prescribed to someone other than yourself, you are committing a criminal act.
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