Me:

Children can and do administer over-the-counter and prescription drugs to themselves in homes, libraries, stores, museums, parks, and just about every single other institution that they encounter in their daily lives, with the sole exception of schools.

PG:

Homes have parents.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes when I was 13 years old, I was at home when my parents were not. Sometime I even took an Advil when they weren’t around, and without having checked with them first.

Children in libraries, stores, museums and parks generally are attended by parents.

I think you’re underestimating the amount of time 13 year olds spend outside of immediate parental supervision. But even if you weren’t, I don’t know what I’d be expected to infer from what you say here. If, when parents are around, 13 year olds aren’t generally subjected to zero-tolerance policies where they absolutely cannot consume prescription or even mild OTC drugs except through the mediation and supervision of their parents, then that would seem to indicate that the school’s policies are out of touch with what responsible 13 year olds are able to do, and in fact do, outside of the school. Which was my point.

Moreover, librarians, storekeepers, docents and rangers never have been deemed to stand in loco parentis. Schools have been, which is why you see this exception.

I’m aware of the legal reasons that government schools have felt compelled to adopt this kind of policy. But I think that’s an explanation of the policy, not a justification of it, and it is absolutely not a justification of using invasive and sexually humiliating methods to ensure that it is rigidly enforced.

As for standing in loco parentis, I think it’s a funny sort of justification for imposing policies that are far more invasive and busybodying than the practices of actually-existing parents. Of course, I know the legal reasons why this is so (specifically, the threat of a lawsuit), but that’s a good reason for dealing with the out-of-whack legal situation, not a good reason for anti-ibuprofen policies.

RonF:

The school has an interest in ensuring that drugs (whether OTC, prescription or illegal) are not distributed among the students outside of the control of the faculty and administration.

No it doesn’t.

No school in the United States spent a minute of its time worrying about anything of the sort until about 15 or 20 years ago, and there’s no real reason why they should, any more than they worry about whether or not students are distributing snack-packs or mechanical pencil refills outside of the control of the faculty and administration. Children can and do administer over-the-counter and prescription drugs to themselves in homes, libraries, stores, museums, parks, and just about every single other institution that they encounter in their daily lives, with the sole exception of schools. The current fixation of schools on trying to tend to every conceivable need that students might have and control every conceivable action that students might take, while on school grounds, is foolish and destructive.

It’s quite reasonable to presume that a kid might stash illicit drugs in their underwear if they don’t want to get caught holding them.

There needs to be some way of searching a kid to see if they’ve done that.

No, there absolutely does not.

If I were to grant, solely for the sake of argument, that schools ought to be concerning themselves with whether or not kids are carrying around Motrin outside of the control of the school nurse, then it would certainly not follow from that that the school has to be able to use strip searches in order to detect violations of the policies they set. Just because something is Against The Rules doesn’t mean that you’re entitled to do anything and everything in order to find out whether or not people are doing it.

Sometimes the only way to catch someone at breaking The Rules is to use procedures that would be too costly, that would interfere too much with other more important goals that the school is trying to accomplish, or that would unacceptably violate the student’s liberty, privacy, or dignity. If so, then what you have to do is just come to terms with the fact that you can’t always enforce all of your school policies all the times, and sometimes clever kids are going to manage to get away with something that the rules say they shouldn’t do — and, well, Christ, what else is new?