As long as there has been the concept of curfew, there have been attempts to circumvent it. Who, after all, wouldn’t chafe against the idea of having someone else restrict your freedom, even if it’s simply by defining a specific time you have to be home by, or how long you’re allowed to be online? Two teenagers in California, however, have taken the rebellion to new lengths – the pair are facing accusations of drugging one of the teens’ parents just to stay online for a few hours more.
The surreal story goes something like this: A couple in the Northern California city of Rocklin have a rule that says they switch off their Internet at home at 10 p.m. every night. Their 15-year-old daughter, like any 21st century teen, obviously wasn’t a fan of this rule and decided to do something about it – if, by “something,” you mean “buying shakes for her parents with a friend and using those shakes to drug her parents so that they’d fall asleep before 10 p.m. and leave her online for as long as she wanted.”
Her plan worked; despite not finishing the shakes because they “tasted funny and were grainy,” her parents both dozed off, doped, without switching the Internet off, and woke at 1 a.m., feeling something similar to a hangover. When that feeling persisted the next day, the two decided to investigate, buying a $5 drug testing kit from the local police station and getting a positive result.
As a result of that positive result, the parents brought their daughter to the police station, which led to the girl and her 16-year-old friend – who reportedly provided the drugs in question from her home in nearby Roseville – charged with willfully mingling a pharmaceutical into food and conspiracy. In her defense, the unnamed 15-year-old reportedly told police that her parents’ Internet policy was “too strict.”
Talking to the Guardian, Rocklin PD lieutenant Lon Milka said that, following the positive drug test, the parents “developed enough information in order to bring their daughter [to the station].” Milka refused to elaborate further on the case, citing California state law which limits the amount of information that can be made public when it comes to crimes concerning juveniles. He did say that the amount of medication used by the two teenagers was still unknown and part of the ongoing investigation.
Milka also expressed that most juvenile crime in the city is along fairly minor lines like alcohol and drug use, with the occasional incident of vandalism. When it comes to juvenile drug use, he said, he’s more used to teens using the drugs themselves instead of incidents “where they are endangering or mingling the pharmaceuticals with [a] milkshake.”
“This is way out of line,” he said. We couldn’t agree more.
