Just say “NO” to “He”
Students’ fun with helium no lightweight prank
Two Gilbert students ran afoul of District policy while setting up for a school dance. They took some of the helium filled balloons and sucked in the gas to talk funny. The drug abusing teens were suspended for five days (later reduced to one day).
District spokeswoman Dianne Bowers said that school principals have the option to suspend students pending further investigation.
…
District policy prohibits non-medical use of drugs, including inhalants.
Helium is a drug? And these students were given unmonitored access to it? The school administrators should be up on charges of endangering, corrupting and contributing to the delinquency of these minors. They went so far as to supply this inhalant drug in pressurized delivery devices. Talk about facilitating drug abuse!
In related news, Gilbert Police have declared the town park clean and safe after the arrest of notorious helium balloon pusher “Bubbles” the Clown. Bubbles and his helium supplier were taken down in a massive tri-county sting operation.
(Tip credit to Jack Mitcham)
I just want to beat bettina to it:
Just one more reason to homeschool your kids.
“Dianne Bowers said that school principals have the option to suspend students pending further investigation”
Investigation? What is there to investigate? Is there something they aren’t telling us?
More evidence that American education is in the crapper. Helium is an element, not a drug. Would kids get suspended for taking an iron supplement on school property?
Also since all air contains some amount of helium, all students huffed helium the same day and should be suspended. The crime is that all the staff and adminsistration also inhaled helium that day, they should be fired.
If it is the fact that the gas was “uncut” and delivered in a pressurized container then should a student have breathing difficulties and have to have oxygen administered by paramedics on school property they to would have to be suspended, if they survived.
We need trained monkeys to run the schools, things would be better than the jackasses we got now.
That was a darn good point. If helium is a drug, then whoever supplied it should be arrested for providing drugs to a minor. If it’s not a drug, then the kids should be let off. You can’t have it both ways, either it’s a drug (which we all know it’s not) and you punish everyone involved, or it’s not.
Would kids get suspended for taking an iron supplement on school property?
If the iron supplement involved swallowing a pill, if course they would. Zero Tolerance, remember?
But if the kids pretended it was a drug, then it would be considered a drug. Some poor girl in Georgia (school administrators must be morons down there, maybe they intermarry) brought Welch’s grape juice from the school cafeteria and pretended it was wine. She was suspended for ten days even though the administration knew she brought it from the cafeteria and knew it was grape juice. They got her under something like pretending a substance is a drug.
There will soon come a time (maybe in the next generation) when parents will realize that they can’t entrust the care of their children to idiots for 7 hours a day.
This also shows the shoddy education these children must be receiving. Anyone who has taken a high school chemistry course knows that helium is an inert gas, that it does not react with any other substance, under any condition. That school administrators called it a drug, when it is physically impossible for helium to affect anyone chemically, like all drugs do, must mean that the administrators don’t even have a basic understnding of the stuff they expect their students to learn.
Yes, Helium is an inert gas. However, to say “it is physically impossible for helium to affect anyone chemically” is not quite right. I know of cases where kids have died from inhaling Helium. Of course, they went way overboard, inhaling many times in a row without breathing air in between. Yes, Helium doesn’t react with anything, but when you inhale pure Helium, you’re not inhaling Oxygen. By the time these kids passed out from oxygen deprevation, it was too late for the air they started breathing to make a difference.
However, as I said, those cases involved a lot more than the simple inhale once or twice to talk funny.
And, I’ll agree that if the school calls it a “drug/inhalent”, why aren’t they resonsible for not only supplying it to the kids, but apparently leaving them unsupervised with it?
I’m curious — would oxygen be considered an inhalant by these morons — especially if inhaled in its “pure” state?
Gonna have to agree with Mac Stone and not with Ken on this one. Suffocation and asphyxiation are indeed consequences of a lack of oxygen, but they are not the direct chemical effects of helium, and it is the direct chemical effect that (I believe) pretty much defines drugs and drug interaction. Mac Stone is right that helium simply can not be defined as a drug under any circumstances. Just like sticking your head in a toilet is not a drug. Safer than dropping gold! Sucking helium is holding your breath - unwise over time, but hardly a pharmacological event
But what would jumpin jack flash say?
well i really dont think its a drug because my frends and i did it @ this school thing and no one got in trouble so u no wut i really really dont think its a drug but i dont think it should be used abusively,however i dont think anyone should do it really that much!!
It really disturbs me because its like no one is taking this seriously that it is an inhalant drug. Like my boyfriend likes to do it and so does my brother and his friends! I have always hated it and just this morning I decided to look up the dangers of sucking helium. Is passing out the only danger? If so, when I tell people that it is hazardous their most likely response will be “well I’m only taking a few breaths and passing out only happens when you take too many breaths of helium and no breaths of real air in between”…blah blah blah..the fact still remains that it is an inhalant drug. But! Are there any other ways to blow up balloons so that they will float in the air other than helium?……thoughts to ponder……Because i was thinking they could make it illegal but yeah….
All this stuff about “drugs” at school IS ridiculous; but, for a different reason.
We have to remember, the schools define “drugs” as: anything, other than food, water, or air, that can be taken internally. By THIS definition, you can include paste, non-toxic paints, and crayons, among a million or so other things! Meanwhile, meth and other horrors
ARE present and being peddled in schools.
Then there is a flip-side to this: Students like a girl in the Shreveport area who got suspended for drugs prescribed by her doctor for
her migraines! She missed valuable time in her senior year AND was threatened with the possibility of NOT GRADUATING WITH HER CLASS!
This was resolved several days later with a
call to her doctor, but she will always have the
stigma of a drug suspension to haunt her! They
could have taken the word of her parents, pharmacist, or even her Dr.’s staff, if they
couldn’t find him!
What seems even more absurd to me is the fact that big-talking, so-called intellects find it necessary to resort to insults and degradation in order to make a point. I’m originally from Georgia and am intelligent enough to realize that the actions of one/some certainly isn’t directly reflective of the entire state. Bettina, your comment was unwarranted and way out of line! You should be ashamed of the example you are setting for your children, it’s sad and pathetic. Please think before you instill your ignorance into your innocent children.
Melissa from Georgia
These kids were doing it as a joke! so many kids around the world do it to, just to ammust their friends. i don’t agree thats its a great idea, but maybe they should have gotten off with a warning!!!
Anyone can say anything on the web. Prove it. ” I know people who have died from helium”. Prove it.
Lighten up people and watch utube.