Police Target Student Drug Use

Police say this marijuana was to be distributed at Walt Whitman and Winston Churchill high schools in Montgomery and the District's Woodrow Wilson. (Courtesy Of Montgomery County Police)

"They'll say, 'Well, it was just a little marijuana. I don't know. I'm a successful lawyer, I smoked marijuana. It can't be that bad,' " she said.

Rita Rumbaugh, a longtime substance abuse prevention specialist with the county school system, said some parents do not consider pot a serious problem until they're told it could reduce standardized test scores.

"That gets their attention," she said.

In years past, when pot use among students was more prevalent, police cracked down in Montgomery. Officers conducted a series of raids on or near high school campuses in 1978, arresting more than 250 students and young people. At one point, students at Walt Whitman responded by throwing stones and milk cartons at police. A group of student leaders called for marijuana legalization.

For many parents, that era seems distant. Today, six of the county's public high schools are among the top 100 in a nationally recognized ranking compiled by The Washington Post; Montgomery students on average score 105 points higher than their national counterparts on the SAT; and one magnet program has produced 25 finalists in the top pre-collegiate science contest, more than any other school in the nation.

"They're better kids than we were," said Bethesda resident Pat Elder, who acknowledged that his generation was in some respects a wilder one. "My daughter is up in her room right now, practicing her French horn."

Still, from some students' perspectives, pot use in Montgomery is widely accepted. Brittany Karakostas, a senior at Churchill, said she doesn't smoke pot and, as a result, is viewed as "an outcast."

"It's not really looked at as being bad because it's so common," she said.

In surveys for 2006-07, about half of Churchill and Whitman students indicated that drugs -- the survey didn't specify which -- were a problem at their schools.

The main suppliers for teens are other teens, according to two former dealers, several student users and Grapes, the detective. The students talk about pot deals at school, Grapes said, but the transactions tend to occur off campus, out of view of school security officers and cameras.

"They run a pretty tight ship," Grapes said of the school system. "The problem is at 2:10 they're out, and they just run wild."

Montgomery police said they haven't specifically targeted high school dealers in recent years. Instead, they have used limited manpower in their narcotics unit to pursue suppliers suspected of trafficking in cocaine or in large quantities of marijuana, 10 pounds or more.