Why can't they just sneak booze from their parent's liquor cabinet like responsible children?
Everyone in my middle school snorted Pixie sticks at least once, because kids are complete raging idiots who want to fit in, no matter what. Someone had watched Scarface, and every kid took turns crushing Smarties or emptying packets of sugar onto a Trapper Keeper, then honking them up through a gutted mechanical pencil. Everyone would cough and laugh, but no one ever went to the hospital. We were dumb, but the worst thing we risked was a sinus infection.
Are kids getting way, way dumber than they used to be? Sure seems like it.
Since 2010, poison control center hotlines across the United States have seen a nearly 400% increase in calls related to children younger than 12 ingesting hand sanitizer, according to new studies by the Georgia Poison Center. 3,266 hand sanitizer cases related to young children were reported to poison control centers in 2010. In 2014, the number increased to 16,117 cases.
Hand sanitizer didn't really become popular until the mid-2000's, but even if there was a ton of it at our middle school, nobody would've chugged it like a deranged homeless person.
Apparently it started as a trend in New Zealand, and then the Internet got ahold of it, parents lost their shit, and everyone started doing it. Now, there's thousands of videos of people doing in on YouTube, and homemade recipes on how to extract the alcohol and presumably filter out the stuff that'll shut down your kidneys. Hopefully.
"Kids are getting into these products more frequently, and unfortunately, there's a percentage of them going to the emergency room," said Dr. Gaylord Lopez, a doctor that's had to help a number of stupid drunk kids.
And you can get trashed in a hurry. The amount of alcohol in it ranges from 45% to 95% — so basically as much as whiskey all the way up to everclear. Chugging even small amounts (say, two or three squirts) can cause alcohol poisoning. By comparison, wine and beer have about 12% and 5% alcohol.
Dr. Lopez explained that some children do it intentionally in order to get drunk, while others do it on a dare from friends. Still others, he said, drink sanitizer because it looks tasty. Man, kids are dumb.
So if you have a kid or a little brother, tell them not to be a raging moron.
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