Controversial drug video shown at Laguna Niguel school upsets parents

LAGUNA NIGUEL, Calif. (KABC) -- Parents at an Orange County elementary school are upset after law enforcement officers showed fifth-grade students a drug video that they say was too much for kids that age.

The video, which was shown to about 100 students at Laguna Niguel Elementary School, illustrates what happens when two young women smoke the hallucinogenic herb salvia. In the video, a man can be heard instructing the women on how to smoke salvia.

Salvia is a legally sold plant, but it can't be sold to minors. It can have potent effects such as hallucinations. The video runs for about six minutes, but the Orange County Sheriff's Department says the students were not shown the entire video. It was part of a "Drug Use is Life Abuse" presentation. The sheriff's department says that the deputy was narrating during the video to try to teach the kids that using drugs creates poor judgment.

The young women in the video appear to get high and start swearing and laughing. They also appeared very unstable as they stood up.

Parents found out about the video after it was shown to their kids. One parent said his 11-year-old daughter was upset.

"It was almost like a 'how-to' video of using a bong, but it wasn't with marijuana, it was a drug I believe called salvia -- something I never even heard about until this video actually came about," said parent Rick Krugh.

Krugh says if you go to the YouTube video, it makes you sign in and consent that you're 18 years old to actually watch the video.

"What we found out from the police department is that this officer went in to a repository of content that they could pull from and it was clearly marked 'recommended for adults.' So there were two layers saying this was not appropriate for children, but yet it still was shown at our public elementary school," said Krugh.

School district officials say parents have expressed their concerns about the video.

"In that video, which actually kind of deviates from the actual curriculum, it had some inappropriate content on it so I understand that parents are frustrated about that. They've been in touch with the district and we've been handling this and doing everything we possibly can to make sure that we make this right," said Stephen Nichols with the Capistrano Unified School District.

"After reviewing this particular video, the sheriff's department, we do acknowledge that it wasn't age-appropriate for a fifth-grade class," said Orange County Sheriff's Lt. Jeff Hallock

The sheriff's department says from now on, any drug-prevention-related video must first be reviewed by the school district and the sheriff's department before it's shown to any students.