Drug humiliation

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - A father says he wasn't trying to shame his 14-year-old son when he made the boy wear a large sandwich-board sign saying, "I abused and sold drugs."

"I'm not out here doing this to humiliate my son," the father told WATE-TV as the teenager walked up and down the sidewalk Wednesday in front of Cedar Bluff Middle School.

"I'm doing this because I love him," he said. "We do have an extreme drug problem in America, and maybe it's time for extreme measures that parents need to take to monitor this problem that we have."

The man wasn't identified by the station to protect the confidentiality of the son, but he appeared on camera. The son's face was not shown.
The father said he recently learned after reading the boy's MySpace page that his son was involved with marijuana and OxyContin. That's when he decided to act, and the boy agreed to the punishment.

After a short time, the school's principal soon came out and asked the father to call it off, which he did.

By then the boy said he'd learned his lesson. "This is embarrassing. I ain't going to be doing it again," the boy said. "Drugs are for losers. That's all I can say."