While burgeoning heroin use in the suburbs of Long Island is certainly something to be concerned about, one has to seriously wonder how and why the Nassau County Legislature had to enact a law to let schools and parents know that their kids were junkies.  According to Newsday,

Nassau lawmakers approved a bill Monday requiring police to notify school districts about heroin arrests, and establish an Internet map on the county police department's Web site to post those charged to create a broader awareness about the highly addictive drug.

The chief sponsor of the bill, Legis. David Mejias (D-Farmingdale), said it was necessary to include the school boards because "a few of them" had refused to recognize they had a heroin problem.

However, he amended the bill to mandate "communitywide dissemination" of heroin arrests by having police create a Web site that would map arrests for possession and sale of heroin.

The theory behind this law was that schools were clueless about heroin use, and needed to be told where heroin was being sold so that they would . . . do what? 

Andrew Malekoff, executive director of the North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center, testified that it was difficult for parents, and even legislators, to confront heroin abuse.

"Public support must replace secret pain, and therein lies the challenge in Natalie Ciappa's [a Suffolk County teenager who died of a heroin overdose] Law," Malekoff said. "With this law comes enormous responsibility. School officials will no longer be able to keep a straight face and say, as I have heard countless times, 'There is no drug problem in my school district.'"

Is the purpose of this law to embarrass school district in denial that they have a drug problem within their community?  Certainly, school boards should engage in measures to recognize and address student drug use, teaching them to steer clear of drugs and to identify students using drugs and help them obtain treatment.  But this seems an awfully heavy-handed way to accomplish this task, given that having a bunch of junkies running around a school is ordinarily viewed as a problem without requiring a public airing.

But this is Long Island, the land of denial.  The school boards don't like being singled out one bit:

Jay L.T. Breakstone, vice president of the Nassau-Suffolk School Boards Association, objected to having the boards included in the legislation, arguing that singling them out for notification would make them the targets of lawsuits.

And don't believe that lawsuits are the issue for second.  It's about school report cards and house prices and pressure to bear on school boards to fix problems with kids that parents leave behind.  Parents on Long Island do nothing wrong.  None ever has.  Just ask one, and he'll tell you. 

This is a ridiculous law, inspired by a ridiculous situation created by a ridiculous group of people who can't manage to come to grips with their own personal reality.  How many parents are so fundamentally out of touch with their children that they don't notice that junior is a junkie?  Since when do school boards have the responsibility of rooting out drug dealing, arresting and prosecuting the perpetrators?  And if they have this significant of a problem, hasn't everyone in the chain of responsibility already blown it big time?

It's not to suggest that the Legislature is being disingenuous in trying to do what it can to deal with a problem that schools are apparently ignoring or denying.  However, this hardly seems like an effective to do so, and it remains unclear what the Legislature thinks the school districts are supposed to do about it, other than sit there red-faced.

On the other hand, there's no mention of how this law will impact those arrested for drug sales, following up on Nassau County's "Wall of Shame" of those arrested (but not yet convicted) of DWI.  Will these maps only show locations of alleged drug sales (such as Joe Smith's living room) or will the information include the identities of arrested but presumed innocent "drug dealers."  It's a shame that the prime sponsor of this law, David Mejias isn't a lawyer, aware of the constitutional issues raised by these dubious efforts to rid Long Island of teenage junkies.  Oh wait.  he is.  Never mind.

And, for the record, Newsday supports this law, because children are good and heroin is bad.  Some very deep thinking went into this one.