HARRISON – The mother of a Harrison Elementary School sixth-grader says administrators overreacted when they suspended her son and two schoolmates for violating a zero-tolerance drug policy by using a breath mint to play a practical joke on a friend.

“We do not want our children to be labeled as drug users or abusers,” Christine Hurd said. “This incident has never been about drugs. It is about a hot breath mint. This is a situation that could have been used as a learning tool instead of, ‘You’re all suspended.”‘

The suspensions were for five days, but later were reduced to two.

According to Hurd, the punishment was an outgrowth of a March 16 incident in which her son offered a friend at school a hot breath mint, telling him, “Try these.” She said the boy asked her son what the tablet was and her son replied, “Just Advil.”

After overhearing the word “Advil,” a third boy said he had a “wicked headache,” asked to have a tablet and was given one by Hurd’s son. When the boy later mentioned to a teacher that he had taken Advil, school officials looked into the incident and suspended the three pupils.

SAD 17 Superintendent Mark Eastman said he could not comment on the case because it involves minors, but noted that school policy bars students from pretending that something is a drug and then giving it or selling it to someone.

“Our policies are designed to keep the kids safe,” Eastman said. “The law and our policy say it is illegal to purport something as a drug and then sell or give it away.

“I hope most of the kids would refuse to take anything offered as a pain reliever or drug without checking with a responsible adult,” he said. “As far as the action’s being a practical joke, well, how many times have you seen a practical joke go bad?”

Hurd said she has written, but not yet mailed, a letter to all parents of schoolchildren in Harrison explaining the incident so that no one gets the false impression that they were passing drugs.

“I do not want to see our school system overreact due to the violence that is occurring throughout the rest of the country. Our children should be allowed to be children and not have their innocence taken away or be labeled by adults,” she added.