Beware of Strawberry Meth
The wonderful folks who brought good, cheap Methamphetamine to your town are now resorting to a tactic previously employed only by cereal and soda pop makers. Meth is hitting streets and playgrounds in flavors like strawberry and cola. This new candy-like drug is not confined to high school and middle school aged crowds. Parents of younger kids need to be aware and like it or not, you must talk to your kids about it.
Candy-Flavored Drugs
"Strawberry Quick" and other flavored cocaine showed up in the tabloids last summer. (See, there is a good reason to read them!) Bright layouts featured a variety of fruity-flavored drugs popular with Young Hollywood and the famous-for-being-famous set. It's understandable that bad habits would eventually trickle down to the rest of us, but a substance that looks and tastes like Pop Rocks had to be specifically created for children.
Someone wants your kid for a customer and they using this stuff to introduce a hard drug in a palatable form. But addiction isn't even the scariest part. A mouthful of candy-flavored Meth can be lethal and just touching the stuff can let it into the bloodstream. With all the different types of candy out there, how's a kid to know what he's being offered isn't real?
There's an informative newscast video at:
Remember When It Was This Easy?
Keep Talking to Your Kids
It's up to us to arm our kids with information and set clear boundaries. You've got to get them to talk to you about what they're hearing at school, on their cell phones, in chat rooms. Look for opportunities to comment on the effects of drug use and especially how to recognize offers of drugs. Kids need to understand it's not going to be as simple as saying no to "drugs". Strawberry Meth is proof that drugs don't have to seem scary to be real.
You've got to go beyond "Just Say No."
Find specific, age appropriate ways to talk to kids about drugs.
Read more about Methamphetamine at Wikipedia.