Schools step up vigil after reports on drug-laced candies

Panic over drug-laced sweets allegedly being sold outside schools has prompted the Association of Heads of ICSE Schools in the city to step up its vigil on hawkers selling food outside campuses.
Recent media reports had claimed sweets and chocolates laced with narcotics were being sold to children outside some schools.
"We have requested our schools to put up their personnel near the gates and keep an eye on hawkers selling food items during breaks and after school hours," the general secretary of the Bengal chapter of the association, Nabarun Dey, said today.
The measures had been initiated in the wake of the media reports, he said.

The reports suggested peddlers were seeking to get young students addicted to narcotics in a bid to increase sales of illegal drugs.
Dey said school staff will mingle with hawkers to spot unknown faces and also look out for any new items being sold.

To a question, Dey said while the association, under which there are some 200 schools in the state, had taken the initiative on the basis of the reports as a preventive measure, it had not come across any evidence of such sweets being sold so far.
"The health of our students is of paramount importance to us and we want to assure guardians about full- proof measures taken to ensure the safety of their wards," Dey, the Principal of Central Modern School, said. '

Association member and school principal Ranjan Mitter said his institution would issue a circular to guardians cautioning them about reports of drug-laced candies.
"But we hadn't come across any such incident," he said.