In an article I swear should have been in the Onion, apparently the latest "drug craze" is kids "smoking" smarties.
Some of the better quotes:
Some children have even taken to snorting it, all to the horror of parents, teachers and the 60-year-old company that manufactures the candy. Through the years, other candies have endured misuse, such as a craze that began by mixing Mentos with Diet Coke to cause a frothy eruption. But few have involved such obvious mimicry of lethal adult vices.
Apparently, kids are evening making how-to videos to share on youtube. Aghast! For shame! How dare our children attempt to do something creative, interesting, and skillful. Don't they know that job-worthy skills only come within the boundaries of a classroom?
The best part is the reaction by parents and by the Smarties company itself.
"I have made it clear to our students that possession of Smarties (or similar candy) will result in a Class II offense," which usually means detention, the note said. Jody Puryear, whose son Grant attends the school, says smoking Smarties could be a gateway leading "to smoking cigarettes or pot or anything else like that." For some teens who have tried smoking Smarties, comparisons to cigarettes or drugs are part of the point. . . . Officials at Ce De Candy Inc., the Union, N.J., makers of Smarties, are decidedly opposed to the craze. "It's just dumb," said Eric Ostrow, Ce De's vice president of sales and marketing. He remembers as a child puffing on candy cigarettes that blew out fake smoke -- a practice that he thinks may have led to years of smoking the real thing. Mr. Ostrow quit smoking in 1994, and Ce De Candy banned smoking at its factory in the early 1980s, long before ostracizing smokers became mainstream, he points out.
Thankfully, a few parents do have some sense. Again, from the article, about a kid named Titus who made an excellent how-to on youtube:
Titus's father, Melvin Williams, says he was initially concerned that the video might glorify smoking or evoke drug use. But after calling a family meeting to discuss the video, Mr. Williams decided Titus was merely being a kid. "I just thought it was funny," he says.
I smoked candy cigarettes as a kid, and I distinctly remember snorting pixie sticks (outcome? it burns. a lot). Heck, in grad school, I even snorted salt on a dare . . . through a rolled up dollar bill (outcome? it burns. a lot). Does this make me a drug addict?
Maybe, in this day and age, some people have trouble blurring the line between fantasy and reality. Adults, I'm looking at you.