The Nappy Cat Chronicles

Incidentally, Lewisville, the town in which this incident occurred, claims to be progressive and urban. However, it’s 25 miles north of Dallas, Texas, a state that executed a mentally retarded man in 2007.

From the article:

Mr. Ortiz said the family’s ordeal began Oct. 19, when his son picked up a bottle of hand sanitizer from the desk of his fifth-period reading teacher at Killian Middle School in Lewisville. He rubbed the gel on his hands and smelled it.

In the view of school officials, the boy “inhaled heavily,” according to Mr. Ortiz, who said his son sniffed the cleanser “because it smelled good.”

The youth was sent to the principal’s office, and the Lewisville police officer assigned to the school began investigating.

“The event happened at the campus,” said Dean Tackett, a spokesman for the Lewisville Independent School District. “But once the police took it over, it was a police investigation. They decide if there are charges and what kind of charges.”

The teen was required to serve a brief in-school suspension and was also fingerprinted and photographed at the Lewisville Police Department.

But it wasn’t over:

Mr. Ortiz said he believed the matter was over until Tuesday when he was served with a petition charging his son with delinquency for inhaling the hand sanitizer to “induce a condition of intoxication, hallucination and elation.”

The frightening paternity and the kicker:

Joni Eddy, assistant police chief in Lewisville, said Friday that hand sanitizer has become a popular inhalant. “That is the latest thing to huff,” she said.

She said officers felt they were acting properly when they pursued the case against Mr. Ortiz’s son under a complex state statute governing volatile chemicals that could be abused.

“The charge said he was using the product other than its intended use,” she said. “Huffing hand sanitizer is certainly using it for something other than its intended use.”

Shirley Simson, a spokeswoman for the National Institute on Drug Abuse in Washington, said in an e-mail that the agency had no data about hand sanitizers being abused as inhalants [emphasis added]. She noted, however, that there have been news reports of some people drinking hand sanitizers for their alcohol content.

The good news is they didn’t pursue the charges:

Mr. Ortiz’s attorney, J. Michael Price II of Dallas, said he believes that the Denton County prosecutor’s office acted quickly to drop the case once he brought the matter to the attention of Ms. Beck on Friday morning.

“I told her I didn’t think a law had been violated,” Mr. Price said. “She made the appropriate decision without a lot of delay.”

More for parents to worry about! If this is a legitimate risk according to school officials, why had they allowed the teacher to have a bottle on her desk? This likely snowballed terribly: The boy probably did inhale deeply, the principal, who has probably never probably never gotten high in his life, said something to the effect of “We know you kids sniff stuff like this to get high.”, and the boy, who has probably never gotten high in his life, agreed.