Teens took cocaine before class
2006-03-02 09:48
London - Four 14-year-old girls were expelled from a British church school for taking cocaine in the toilets before lessons, a local newspaper reported on Wednesday.
Police were called to The Holy Trinity School, in Crawley, southeast England, on the morning of January 31 after classmates reported the group snorting the drug off toilet cisterns.
One of the girls involved in the incident told local newspaper The Crawley News: "My friend knew what to do and told me it probably wouldn't do anything so I tried it. We snorted a line-and-a-half each through a plastic straw and went back to lessons."
Another of the pupils told the newspaper she knew of incidents in which pupils had attended classes after taking ecstasy or cannabis.
A Sussex Police spokesperson confirmed they were called to the school.
"Police conducted a thorough search and a 15-year-old girl was interviewed and given a final warning by Crawley Police," he said.
"In relation to the same incident a 14-year-old was given a police reprimand."
Headteacher Peter Wickert said incidents involving drugs were "extremely rare" and they had a zero-tolerance drugs policy.
The revelations follow the publication on Wednesday by the United Nations' anti-drug body, the International Narcotics Control Board, that two percent of Britons now used cocaine, a level almost comparable to that in the United States.
A report published last month in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine said that 344 000 people take cocaine every month in Britain while 17 000 take the more powerful and more addictive crack cocaine.