
The War on Kids
Jesse Snodgrass, a high schooler with Asperger's syndrome, gets arrested after an undercover police officer poses as a student, befriends him, and talks him into buying a small amount of marijuana. The film uses his case as its centerpiece to argue that the drug war has turned American public schools into hunting grounds for the most vulnerable kids rather than places of education. It widens from there into a broader indictment of school discipline: zero-tolerance policies, metal detectors, armed officers patrolling hallways, and suspension rates that push students toward the justice system instead of away from it. Interviews with students, parents, and legal advocates lay out how these practices erode basic civil rights for minors, from unreasonable searches to entrapment tactics normally associated with organized crime stings. The film treats Snodgrass's story as evidence of a system-wide pattern rather than an isolated scandal, asking what it means when a school's response to a struggling student is a sting operation instead of support.