For 40 minutes last Friday morning a dozen K-9 narcotics teams toured the parking lots and hallways of Newtown High School. They were there by special invitation of the school’s administration, the Newtown Prevention Council, and the Newtown Police Department. Despite advance notice of the day’s “drug sniff” by the police dog teams, enough evidence was collected to support the arrests of three students and the issuance of an infraction to a fourth on drug-related charges. The sweep of the high school by the police marked the start of what is expected to be a regular program to monitor the presence of drugs in the high school.

The use of police and dogs to search for drugs at the high school, according to Superintendent of Schools Joseph Erardi, Jr, fits with the school district’s mission to provide all Newtown students a safe and drug-free environment. That view seems logical. Given Newtown’s heightened sensitivity to security in its schools, it doesn’t make sense to respect safe havens for illegal drugs in hallway lockers and school parking lots. While the arrests at NHS involved marijuana and related paraphernalia, which has been at the heart of a liberalization of drug laws around the nation, including Connecticut, the risks of even casual recreational drug use were underscored once again on February 22 when 11 people at Wesleyan University in Middletown were hospitalized after taking what they believed to be MDMA or “Molly.”

There is a fair distinction to be made between marijuana and MDMA or other hallucinogens, as well as highly addictive stimulants and opiates. That debate, however, has no bearing on the conduct required of students attending public schools. Similarly, privacy concerns and objections based on Fourth Amendment protections against illegal search and seizure do not apply, not simply as a matter of sensible policy but as a matter of law. The Supreme Court ruled in 2013 (Florida v. Jardines) that a drug-sniffing dog on someone’s front porch signaling drugs within a house does constitute a “search” requiring a warrant. However, public and private places, including schools, to which the dogs and their handlers are invited are specifically exempted from that ruling. And lower federal courts have consistently found that random, unannounced drug searches in schools are constitutional.

Let us hope that last week’s arrests at Newtown High School send the intended message: school experiences and drug experiences don’t mix. Let the dogs become regular visitors at the high school. If they help the lesson sink in, well then, that really would be nothing to sniff at.