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Snorting Smarties Could Give Teens Nasal Maggots, and Other Dumb Teen Drug Fads
Apparently, teens are now targeting the most unwanted Halloween candy of your childhood — Smarties — and are snorting them to get high. Or, at least, they're trying to, since it seems nothing actually happens when they crush it up and snort it into their noses. The fad isn't really new, but a warning from a middle school in Maine now notes that kids can develop "nasal maggots" if the colorful candy gets lodged into the nose cavities. If you'd really like to Google "nasal maggots," go ahead, but be aware that's it's completely disgusting.
Let's take a look at some other questionable and dangerous teen drug trends from recent years.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
Hand Sanitizer
It looks innocent enough, but a palmful of hand sanitizer could equal the alcohol intake of a few shots. When teens found that out, all hell broke loose. In 2012, six teenagers in California were hospitalized in one month alone due to alcohol poisoning from hand sanitizer. With a bottle of the stuff equal to a 120-proof drink, Purell isn’t actually so pure.
Vodka Tampons
Apparently, kids don’t have enough time to wait for alcohol to travel through their digestive systems to start working. Lo and behold, the vodka tampon was born. Teens soak it in alcohol and shove it into their, um, crevices, to get a quicker effect. Also popular? Vodka eyeballing. Yup, that means pouring alcohol straight into the eye socket. Side effects? Just blindness.
Freon
Do you have a giant gap in your window where your air-conditioning unit used to be? Do you know any teenagers? Well, you might want to check on them, because teens have apparently taken to huffing the Freon in air conditioners. Not-so-good side effects include frozen lungs or brain damage.
It’s probably best to secure your air conditioner from those thieving teens. Or take a more blunt approach: “It will kill you,” says air conditioning technician Lynn Morris.
Smoking Alcohol
In an episode of Parks and Recreation, Ron Swanson ate his words when he said, ”There’s no wrong way to consume alcohol.” Turns out, there is.
In videos, users pour alcohol over dry ice or make homemade vaporizers with bike pumps. Liquid alcohol is poured into a bottle, which is then inserted with the bike-pump needle, and voilà, smoking alcohol is born. It’s just as terrible as it sounds: Alcohol smokers are at a far greater risk of poisoning because it doesn’t metabolize through their stomach and liver.
Digital Drugs
Way back in 2010, the Internet’s morality police was aghast when a report about i-dosing came to light. I-dosing, or using digital drugs, allows users to listen to music that alters their mental state, apparently inducing a high equal to smoking pot, cocaine, and opium. This author is skeptical about the whole process, but sites that promise a digital high are still up and running.
