NewStudents, drugs and rock and roll: Chinese students held for taking drugs after raid on famed Beijing music school

Chinese police raided a music school in Beijing on Wednesday night, taking away dozens of students after they allegedly failed urine tests for drugs, news portal Sohu reported.

A verified Weibo account of a rock music podcast first broke the news when it reported that residents’ complaints had led police to raid Beijing Midi School of Music, where students, aged 18 to 20, were allegedly taking drugs.

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The school’s principal Zhang Fan later confirmed that around 300 students were required by police to take urine tests for drugs and that about a dozen of those who were taken away returned to school yesterday.

“Midi has very strict rules of living at school … Students will be punished for even smoking in their dormitories,” Zhang told Tencent News, which also reported the incident.

“Students taking marijuana is definitely not good, but we have to give them chances to rectify their mistakes … music is a good cure.”

Zhang said if his students had tried marijuana out of curiosity, detention was an inappropriate way to deal with their mistake. The school would educate the students instead of punishing them, he said.