Ontario, Canada, high school teachers as enforcers in the war on drugs: What their students see and say

This paper examines how high school teachers interact with students on the subject of marijuana. Results, based on 49 focus groups with 278 high schoo l students in Ontario, Canada, reveal three basic assumptions of the studen ts: Ii only some teachers can actually tell when a student is high on marij uana; 2) many teachers have tried marijuana or continue to use ir; and 3) i ndividual teachers vary in how they respond to students who are high. Resul ts suggest that changes in the relationship between marijuana and authority account in large part for the seeming reluctance of so many teachers to ex ercise their mandate to discipline students who use marijuana. The reasons for this are twofold: I) many teachers do riot see use of marijuana of and by itself as a threat to their authority; and 2) teachers who choose to con front users nan the risk of having their authority and independence of acti on undermined once they report infractions to administrators who have autho rity over teachers and students alike.