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I've been seeing this scary letter making the rounds on Facebook:

Doctors letter warning about the dangers of so called "Strawberry Quick or strawberry meth" that looks like pop rocks and is basically candy.

Quite simply, is this a real thing? Is the letter authentic? Is there candy flavored meth floating around elementary schools? Is the phenomena real? Should parents really be concerned.

Or is this yet another example of annoying Facebook chain-maily crap floating around?

Oddthinking
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Doug T.
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    http://www.snopes.com/medical/drugs/candymeth.asp – JasonR Jan 09 '13 at 18:48
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    Sounds like another case of [razor blades in apples](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoned_candy_myths) to me. – Tacroy Jan 09 '13 at 18:49
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    @Brightblades Do you want to make that an answer? – DJClayworth Jan 09 '13 at 21:17
  • @DJClayworth is Snopes enough of a reliable source for this site? I thought it had a lot of connotations like Wikipedia. It was mostly meant as a smart aleck reply anyway. – JasonR Jan 09 '13 at 21:31
  • **Very similar** http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1366/kindergarten-drug-dealers – Sklivvz Jan 09 '13 at 21:32
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    @Brightblades it's actually worse than Wikipedia as many times there are no verifiable sources – Sklivvz Jan 09 '13 at 21:33
  • @Sklivvz yeah this looks like a dup of that. Although it'd be nice if that question had a better title. – Doug T. Jan 09 '13 at 21:48
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    @Sklivvz: A bit harsh. They do fail to give verifiable sources sometimes, but a majority of the time (including this one) they provide good references. – Oddthinking Jan 10 '13 at 00:10
  • @Oddthinking getting off topic here but... that's what I meant. – Sklivvz Jan 10 '13 at 06:42
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    aren't the presence of emoticons sufficient to debunk this or are they acceptable on an official posting now – Ryathal Jan 10 '13 at 13:27

1 Answers1

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is this a real thing?

Probably not

Police duped over fictional drug, 5 March 2008

Last year, the charity DrugScope said it believed the hoax e-mail originated in the United States.

If "This is happening all over the country" in the USA since 2008, we ought to reasonably expect it to be well-reported in mainstream media and medical reports/studies by now.

MICROGRAM BULLETIN, VOLUME 41, NUMBER 7, JULY 2008

The DEA Western Laboratory (San Francisco, California) recently received an exhibit consisting of 13 tied, clear plastic bags containing pink, off-white, and white powders, all with a generic, sweet, fruity odor, purported strawberry, lemon, and coconut flavored cocaines

...

[Editor’s Notes: Although flavored “hard” drugs (notably “strawberry meth”) have received extensive press in the mass media, to date very few such exhibits have been submitted to the DEA Laboratories. This is the first report of “flavored cocaine” to Microgram Bulletin.]

MICROGRAM BULLETIN, VOLUME 42, NUMBER 1, JANUARY 2009

It is possible that the tiny purple specks in the exhibit were bits of a grape flavored candy or lollipop, but this was not formally determined.

...

[Editor’s Notes: “Flavored methamphetamine” (most notably “strawberry meth”) has received extensive and often alarmist coverage in the mass media over the past two years. However, this is the first confirmed sample of “flavored methamphetamine” submitted to a DEA laboratory, and is also the first such report by any laboratory to Microgram. A small number of exhibits with unusual colors have been submitted to the South Central Laboratory (Dallas, Texas) over the past two years; however, none of the latter samples had any noticeable fruit or candy-like odors.

Neither of the above examples look like pop rocks (follow links to see photos).

Conclusion

Almost entirely false.

The claim is grossly exaggerated, alarmist and does not cite supporting evidence or refer to verifiable reports from any official healthcare, law enforcement or other bodies.

RedGrittyBrick
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    `we ought to reasonably expect it to be well-reported in mainstream media and medical reports/studies by now.` - the only time this happens is when the media wants to perpetuate the scare, not prevent it – rickyduck Jan 11 '13 at 09:27
  • @rickyduck arguable. The media would jump on something like that, for prevention or not. Anyway, I remember similar scary stories going on when I was in primary school in the 80s... Always a good classic – nico Nov 10 '15 at 16:01