When the announcement came over the public address system Tuesday morning, East Coweta High School students knew the school was getting serious about drug and weapons violations.

Sheriff Mike Yeager, along with school administrators, "locked" the school down and proceeded to conduct a sweeping search with drug dogs and metal detectors to find any contraband at the school.

After an hour, officials had completely covered six classrooms and discovered some interesting items during the search. The most notable item was eighteen small bags of suspected marijuana that was an indirect result of the lockdown.

"One person got scared because of the lockdown and surrendered the bags," he said.

The sweep also netted several pocket knives, cigarettes, prescription drugs and one item from a teacher's handbag.

"The dog was sniffing around the teacher's purse, but was not really reacting like he was sniffing drugs. We discovered vitamins," Yeager said.

Although the vitamin capture was fairly amusing, Yeager said the lesson is clear.

"If we find teachers with anything illegal, they will also be arrested," he said.

The sweep was the first conducted since the school system agreed to upgrade the security at the schools and allow random checks by drug dogs to make sure illegal drugs were not being brought to school.

Now that the first one has been conducted, Yeager said his department, along with school officials, now know how long the searches will take and what can be accomplished.