Backed by his superintendent, a school principal in Virginia censored a student newspaper article about “dabbing,” smoking a concentrated dose of marijuana’s active ingredients from a nail. The article’s writer, SaraRose Martin, co-editor-in-chief of The Falconer, gave the article to a local news website where it got 11,400 hits. Frank LoMonte of the Student Press Law Center said it would be better to put such news into a school newspaper where it could be viewed in an educational setting with adult guidance rather than throw it out into the wild west of the internet with often dodgy standards. (The Washington Post, April 5, 2015, by Mariah Balingit)
But the principal feared that students would be subject to a new and dangerous drug without adult guidance. He felt that the newspaper was not the right forum for the issue and that adults used to talking to students about drugs should handle it. Martin rejected that line of reasoning, “Most of the student body is bothered by the administration taking away our voice. I’ve got a lot of parents in the community saying, ‘I didn’t know anything about this. We need to know about this. You have a voice worth listening to.'” (Student Press Law Center, March 24, 2015, by Mariana Viera)