I’m not sure who needs the alcohol class here. Is it the parents who packed their young one’s lunch with fermented tea? Is it the youth who drank the tea? Or is it school administrators who are making a big deal about? I will ask you to judge for yourself.
The incident occurred in Orange County, California. The Newport-Mesa Unified School District has a hard-line policy against alcohol It will now re-examine that policy after an 11-year-old student brought to school a bottle of kombucha tea containing a tiny amount of alcohol. As reported in www.ocregister.com.
The boy, a seventh-grader, originally got in hot water for having a glass bottle in his lunchbox, then his situation got worse when school officials noticed that the label on the bottle of fermented tea said it contained less than 0.5 percent alcohol by volume. District policy states that anyone who possesses products with even trace amounts of alcohol could be subject to discipline.
The boy was told that the consequences of possessing alcohol could include a referral to a program to treat youth substance abuse. The vice principal initially recommended a five-day suspension, but officials later decided against any such punishment.
What do you think of this? Much ado about nothing, right?