School bans Smarties, Pixy Stix as health threats

[The Straight Story]

School bans Smarties, Pixy Stix as health threats

GRAND RAPIDS TOWNSHIP, Mich.—

A middle school near Grand Rapids has banned sugary Smarties candy, saying it's being crushed and inhaled and can be a gateway to "inappropriate substances."

Northern Hills Middle School is part of the Forest Hills district. Principal Nancy Susterka says there are credible reports that kids are crushing the Smarties and inhaling the powder. She says it can cause infections, chronic coughing and choking.

In an email to parents Friday, the principal says "huge numbers" of Smarties wrappers have been found at the school. Susterka has also banned Pixy Stix.

She tells parents she wants to keep their kids healthy and safe.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-mi-school-nosmarties,0,5962895.story

[Brickbat]

1. I remember kids crushing and snorting them when I was in 8th grade, back in the mid-80s.

Tough guys tried it once, it hurt and was gross, and they stopped. Of course, these were the same kids who showed up at dances drunk, but I really don't think it was the Smarties' fault. :shrug:

[Maine-ah]

6. and when they didn't have those...

I remember idiots scraping pieces of chalk, making lines on their desks with it and snorting that. Seems like not much has changed in regards to the pixie sticks.

[tridim]

2. Back to Fun Dip and candy cigarettes I guess.

[johnnie]

3. I used to snort Snickers

...and Three Musketeer bars. But I would NEVER do the Smarties.

[LibDemAlways]

4. When I was in 2nd grade a classmate used to bring a big stash of

pixy stix to school and sell them at recess for a penny. This was in 1959. Kids would tip the stick and empty the contents all at once into their mouths. Never occurred to us to snort it, but it strikes me as more stupid than dangerous.

[tridim]

5. I hope you're talking about the small pixie sticks and not the yard-long jumbo version.

[LibDemAlways]

12. Don't think they had the yard long version back then. These were the small paper ones!

[dkf]

7. That can't possibly make you high can it? Ridiculous.

[nxt1]

8. course not

But it is the gateway to bad drug behavior- at least in their minds. Concept to bringing a fake gun to school maybe (or is this far off). I don't agree with it- kids did it all the time when I was in the elementary schools.

[dkf]

11. Or maybe it will be painful enough to scare them away...and it has no payoff either.

Gosh I can't imagine that acidic stuff in my nose. When I eat too much my mouth gets raw.

[Tunkamerica]

9. There were kids who did that at my school too.

[Dappleganger]

10. Instead of banning all this stuff they need to try and redirect their interests with something else.

Take one thing away and they'll replace it with another snortable (is that a word?) substance. They need to be positively directed towards other activities.

[provis99]

13. is this from The Onion?

[RagAss]

14. Pixy Stix brought down the Berlin Wall !

[saras]

15. If snorting Pixy Stix isn't an "inappropriate substance" then WTF is?

The gateway hypothesis regarding drug use has been disproved so many times, in so many contexts, over so many decades of drug research, that even using the term necessarily pollutes one's judgment of the user's expertise.

Kids can eat so many more Smarties than they could possibly inhale that the wrapper thing is surely a false lead. I mean, I like Smarties. Thirty or forty packages is unhealthy but not a strain for a kid to eat. As an adult, I could eat ten packages at a sitting no problem.

But I can barely imagine crushing and snorting ONE Smartie, even as a stupid kid. A package, forget it. More packages than I can eat - ridiculous. It would be like suspecting your kid of huffing gasoline because his car seems to be getting fewer miles per gallon.

It sounds like it might be more important to get this community to stop drinking the Kool-Aid.

[Raine]

16. Oh Jesus ... how STUPID

on the part of anyone who do such an IDIOTIC thing and the school for banning the candy! I remember a kid back in the 60's taking the reed type stick off a balloon, grating shavings from it and smoking it. :puke: I guess that's why balloons are on ribbons now and not sticks. :sarcasm:

[uppityperson]

17. They should just ban noses since the list of things you can snort is HUGE. Ban the NOSE!!!!!

[Liberal_in_LA]

18. "huge numbers" of Smarties wrappers!

:o