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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Sniffer dogs to hunt drugs in Bucks schools
This is Local London
Tuesday 11 Mar 2003 Sniffer dogs will soon go into secondary schools to search for illegal drugs. Yesterday Thames Valley Police, Buckinghamshire County Council and headteachers from Chesham High School, Chesham Park Community College, Dr Challoners Grammar School, The Amersham School, The Beaconsfield School and Dr Challoners High School, unveiled their pilot scheme. Parents were warned about the development last week. PC Paul Sorensen, Chiltern Vale's youth officer, said: "The idea is not to punish but to reform." He added that the scheme is not a soft option. He said: "This doesn't mean there won't be any police action. One of the things we have said from the beginning is that dealers will be arrested." PC Sorensen, who has been working on the project for a year, has looked at other areas where dogs have been used and adapted the Bucks scheme to take in the best of what he has seen. It will not be what happened in one area, where a 15 year-old found with drugs, was arrested on the spot and taken to court. The dogs will not be police dogs, which when they find evidence, try to search drugs out actively. They will be 'passive' dogs which sit and wait when they find something. In November, the Free Press reported that school children admitted that drugs could be ordered on tap in schools. "You can just say 'I need it' and someone gets it," said one teenager. The most common drug is cannabis but the teenagers said pills and cocaine could also be ordered in class. At yesterday's launch Mark Fenton, headteacher at Dr Challoners Grammar School, Chesham Road, Amersham, said drug taking is a problem throughout society, so it is not surprising they are found in schools. Tim Andrew, headteacher at Chesham High School, White Hill, Chesham, said schools that said they had no drug taking were deluding themselves and that even primary schoolchildren know who to approach. If drugs are found on a pupil, they may be excluded, through the school's own drugs' policy. They will be referred to drugs counsellors and given help with lessons. If police are involved they will probably use the Restorative Justice approach, which involves getting offenders to recognise what they have done and the harm it does. PC Sorensen said: "Schools should be safe and drugs free."
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