A Texas middle-school student found sniffing a teacher's alcohol-based hand sanitizer was not committing a crime, prosecutors in Denton County have ruled.

The Dallas Morning News reported Jan. 26 that the 15-year-old seventh-grader at Killian Middle School in Lewisville picked up a bottle of hand sanitizer from a teacher's desk, rubbed it on his hands, and sniffed it. The boy was sent to the principal's office, subjected to in-school suspension, and then referred to police on suspicion that he was inhaling the gel to get high.

Three months later, the local district attorney's office ruled that the hand gel is not an inhalant and dropped delinquency charges that had been filed against the youth.

"It's not a crime. Hand sanitizer does not fall within that statute," said Jamie Beck, first assistant district attorney in Denton County. "The police agency brought it up mistakenly thinking it was."

"I'm glad the DA's office decided they made a mistake, but they didn't decide that until after I hired a lawyer and the media got involved," said the boy's father, Richard Ortiz. "They were going to prosecute my son. He still has that stigma. People know him as a drug user, and he's not."

A spokesperson for the Lewisville Independent School District said it was the police department's decision to file charges against the student. Joni Eddy, the assistant police chief in Lewisville, said that hand sanitizer has become a popular inhalant.

"That is the latest thing to huff," Eddy said. "The charge said he was using the product other than its intended use. Huffing hand sanitizer is certainly using it for something other than its intended use."

A spokesperson for the National Institute on Drug Abuse said the agency has had no reports of hand sanitizers being used as inhalants.