Posted on 10/08/2003 8:10:58 PM PDT by mhking
A teenager was disciplined for sharing medication used to treat asthma, but he said it saved his girlfriend's life, News2Houston reported Wednesday.
Andra Ferguson and her boyfriend, Brandon Kivi, both 15, use the same type of asthma medicine, Albuterol Inhalation Aerosol.
Ferguson said she forgot to bring her medication to their school, Caney Creek High School, on Sept. 24. When she had trouble breathing, she went to the nurse's office.
Out of concern, Kivi let her use his inhaler.
"I was trying to save her life. I didn't want her to die on me right there because the nurse's office (doesn't) have breathing machines," Kivi said.
"It made a big difference. It did save my life. It was a Good Samaritan act," Ferguson said.
But the school nurse said it was a violation of the district's no-tolerance drug policy, and reported Kivi to the campus police.
The next day, he was arrested and accused of delivering a dangerous drug. Kivi was also suspended from school for three days. He could face expulsion and sent to juvenile detention on juvenile drug charges.
The mothers of both teenagers are angry.
"My son will not go to jail. This is ridiculous," said Theresa Hock, Kivi's mother. "I believe he shouldn't be punished at all because he was helping her. She was in distress."
"If he hadn't helped her, she would have passed out or died or something because her asthma's been really bad this year," said Sandra Ferguson, Andra's mother.
The school principal said he couldn't do anything about it since Kivi not only broke school rules, but also allegedly violated state law.
"It's simply a matter that it's classified as a dangerous drug. It's an inhaler form, but yet, if it had been in pill form or any other, it's still classified as a dangerous drug," said Greg Poole, the Caney Creek principal.
"Would Caney Creek had want Andra to have died rather than my son to help her?" Hock said.
Poole said the nurse never considered Andra to be in a life-threatening situation.
The school district will hold a hearing on the matter Friday.
However, I guess I'm like you, I can't understand why the people who work as office staff in our clinic don't understand all of the procedures that we do, med we give, etc.; I guess THEY must be limited too :)
If I was the governor, I'd issue a pardon here.
I'm an asthmatic, and use the same inhalor(or proventil, same type of thing). Technically under school policy, I wasn't supposed to carry it with me. I did anyway.
In fact, I lent my inhalor to a friend who needed it after a track run. I did the same thing this guy did. Luckily, no jackass reported me to the cops or the school officials.
A Montgomery County teenager, expelled from school for letting his girlfriend use his prescription asthma inhaler, will face no criminal charges, his mother said Friday.The 15-year-old's family reached an agreement with school officials and attorneys during a hearing at Caney Creek High School on Friday.
The boy can return after the Christmas holidays, but his family said they have decided he will be home-schooled.
On Sept. 23, the teen accompanied his girlfriend to the nurse's office because she was having asthma problems. The nurse reported he lent the girl the inhaler.
Family members say he was trying to help, and noted that the girl uses the same prescription.
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