I love the trend of making illegal anything that looks like something naughty, but isn’t. One example from Louisiana is small cups of Jell-O being distributed (unclear whether they were sold or given away from various reports) looking too much like Jell-O shots. All a teacher had to do to tell whether they were alcoholic or not is try a random one. Unless you’re going to tell me that the graduates of the lowest-SAT part of the university never tasted real Jell-O shots…

The point being, if you show up a school official by revealing that they can’t tell marijuana from oregano, you get treated as if you brought the real thing. I once had to learn the Polish and Russian for soap because I was taking a bag full of powdered detergent to Russia and on to Poland (myd?o in Polish, ????? in Russian, if memory serves) because I was afraid otherwise I’d get grilled by ex-KGB with a grudge over coming out on the down side of the Cold War. That was fine, but trying the same trick in a school will get you brought up on charges.

Now, think about it before your reflexive but-what-about-the-children instinct kicks in. What, essentially, is different about school than work? If you brought in little cups of Jell-O that looked like shots, would you be arrested? Perhaps a more retentive boss might frown a bit–it might not be politic. But would you be suspended? Fired? If you work outside of a company founded by Ross Perot, likely not. Could you have a small bag of powdered detergent? Probably.

Now for those who say “but what about school shootings and safety (for the children)”? Well, what about workplace shootings and safety? Somehow generations of kids managed to get out of school without metal detectors, and guns were if anything more prevalent, as were drugs.