Teens Getting Tight On Hand Sanitizers

Kids, meaning teenagers, seemed to want to stuff all of life's 'fun' into five and a half minutes of brain deadening antics.  And more often than not, some of them push self-indulgence to the point of irreversible harm.

Playing chicken in a car.  Binge drinking.  Suffocation games.. Playing meth-roulette. Sniffing glue and inhaling aerosols.  All goodies from yesterday.

Now gulping cleaning products is all the rage.  The idea is to first distill dangerous levels of toxic ethyl alcohol.  Guess isopropyl alcohol from Walgreens is too easy.

Bottles of hand-sanitizer contain 62% ethyl alcohol by volume and are inexpensive and easily purchased - without an ID. Distillation instructions are readily available on the internet, of course. Common table salt is used to extract the alcohol, creating a dangerous concoction far more potent and dangerous than texting while driving, even.

A few 1-ounce shots will induce slurred speech, burning stomachs, diarrhea, memory loss and even irreversible organ damage eventually leading to death if done frequently. Other hygiene products such as mouthwash, cough syrup and even vanilla extract can be abused in similar ways.

Two homeless people in Albuquerque, New Mexico, recently died after drinking a mix of distilled hand sanitizer and mouthwash.

So become informed parents. Stay close to your teens. Teach them that it is one thing to drink a beer, but something entirely different to swill down a few shots of nearly 100% pure grain alcohol.

Death or brain-damaged is no way to stumble through the rest of life.