Smarties

Every time you think you've seen it all they seem to come up with something new.

Is it a passing phase? Is it just a teen fad? Time will tell.

Most schools agree that students should not smoke on campus. Many schools have been forced to modify the term "smoke" to include "use tobacco." But what about candy?

If you go to Google and search "smoke smarties" you'll get about 28,000 hits.

Remember Smarties ("America's favorite candy wafer roll!")? Smarties are a fruit-flavored candy produced by Cd De Candy, Inc., first made in 1949. They are marketed in Canada under the name "Rockets." The individual candies look like a pill and are packed in a roll of about 16 wrapped in colored cellophane tube.

Kids are "smoking" the candies by crushing the roll into a powder, pouring the powder onto their tongue and then blowing out "fine Smarty dust" which looks very much like cigarette smoke. Some kids have become so adept at this they can blow "smoke rings" at the cafeteria lunch table.

Not a wonderful site for visitors as you show off your school.

If you're having a hard time visualizing this, take a look at some YouTube videos of the kids in action. Some have titled their work "How to Smoke Smarties." Others proclaim "Quit cigs and start the smarts..." Many of these video have been around for more than a year, so this activity has been around for a while. But recent reports from schools indicate it's gaining more traction daily.

And that brings us to the question of what to do about it.

If you're old enough, you'll recall Candy Cigarettes.

Candy cigarettes were introduced in the early 19th century. They were made out of chalky sugar, bubblegum or chocolate and wrapped in paper so they resembled cigarettes. They were immediately controversial, with many critics believing the candy was leading children to become smokers later in life.

If you think dealing with the Smarties problem is tough, put yourself in the shoes of the principals of the 1960s who faced a lunch table of 12-year-olds with candy cigarettes in their mouths and candy cigarette packs wrapped into the sleeve of their T-shirts!

The selling of these candy cigarettes has been banned in several countries such as Finland, Norway, the Republic of Ireland, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

In the United States a ban was considered in 1970 and again in 1991, but was not passed into federal law. In Canada federal law prohibits candy cigarette branding that resembles real cigarette branding.

Thankfully, the fad disappeared.

Some schools have seen the Smarty fad get out of hand and have outlawed it. The typical punishment is an after-school detention. Other schools have gone so far as to assign a detention for simply possession of the candy.

One published episode saw a school punish two students with suspensions when they crushed Smarties and pretended to snort the powder like cocaine. The dilemma, of course, was the school's policy on "look-alike drugs."

We've chatted with a number of middle and high school educators and most are of the belief that this fad will disappear. Until then, they are working to prevent the disturbing "whack" of the Smarties roll being slammed between two books. Some use the disturbance to confiscate (the Smarties, not the book) and assign an essay to be written for homework on "The dangers of Gateway drugs" or "The dangers of look-alike drugs."

These types of assignments can work to mollify the activity as well as provide a learning component to the "assigned punishment."