Kids, Snorting Smarties Can Get You Suspended From School

Snorting Smarties is apparently punishable by out-of-school suspension.

That’s at least the case for at least three male students of Marshall Middle School in New Mexico. According to a news story from Metro, a group of parents are now outraged that their little snorters were suspended from the school for what officials described as “possession of drugs.”

(Just for the record, Smarties are not known to have any drug like qualities.)

Nevertheless, if you mash and beat on one of the chalky circular candies hard enough, you can get a substance with the consistency of cocaine.

Kelly Cook, suspended student Andrew Stonelake’s mother, said she was “shocked” by the decision, and that “her son had simply crushed the sweets into a powder that he could then blow at his friends, describing his behaviour as ‘horseplay,'” Metro notes.

Cook was also angry that the school’s first reaction was suspension when they had not previously warned the students about the action.

Cook presumably received word from her son and/or the other students that there had been no prior warnings, but until the school officials sound off on it, it will be hard to know that for sure.

Kids, especially young people in middle school, are not exactly the most forthright with their parents when it comes to in-school experiences. Unfortunately, there has been no official word from the school outside of the suspension itself.

Surprisingly, when I was preparing this story for publication, I realized this wasn’t the first time the Inquisitr had reported on the act of snorting Smarties.

In fact, we’ve had three previous stories on the act of it, including one that speculated it might be a fake new trend.

Well, apparently there’s nothing fake about it, as the story above broke this week.

So what can happen to someone that decides snorting Smarties is a good idea?

In the worst case scenario, snorting Smarties is claimed to be capable of producing an “immediate allergic reaction which untreated may lead to respiratory arrest and death.” Erie County Health Commissioner Dr. Gail Burstein confirms, in a piece for the New York Daily News, that this is a real possibility and not a hoax intended to scare people:

“If the Smarties do end up getting into the lung, then that can also cause infection. It is an irritant; it can cause wheezing and maybe chronic cough and asthma and sinus complications. And, ultimately, if someone is allergic to sugar or the contents of Smarties, then they could end up having an anaphylactic reaction and dying.”

What’s even more rare is when frequent snorting causes maggots to go after the sugars wedged into the nasal cavities. There’s also fears that the Smarties candies may be a gateway drug that leads to snorting actual banned substances, smoking cigarettes, or smoking weed.

What do you think about Marshall Middle School’s decision to suspend the students for snorting Smarties? Good call or too much?