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We’ve all been there…you know 16-years-old and wanting to get drunk. I remember standing in the parking lot at the liquor store and asking complete strangers to buy me some beer…it always worked.

Now it seems like each generation is doing something new and bizarre to get their fix. Remember the teens using tampons soaked in vodka? Now kids are starting to use hand sanitizer…some of which contain 62% alcohol!

“All it takes is just a few swallows and you have a drunk teenager,” said Cyrus Rangan, director of the toxicology bureau for the county public health department and a medical toxicology consultant for Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. “There is no question that it is dangerous.”

The liquid hand sanitizer is 62% ethyl alcohol and makes a 120-proof liquid. A few drinks can cause a person’s speech to slur and stomach to burn, and make people so drunk that they have to be monitored in the emergency room.

Some of the teenagers used salt to separate the alcohol from the sanitizer, making a potent drink that is similar to a shot of hard liquor.

Six teenagers have shown up in two San Fernando Valley emergency rooms in the last few months with alcohol poisoning after drinking hand sanitizer, worrying public health officials who say the cases could signal a dangerous trend.

Doctors said this is the latest over-the-counter product that teenagers have adapted for a quick high. Teenagers have done the same with mouthwash, cough syrup and even vanilla extract.

Although there have been only a handful of cases, Rangan said the practice could easily become a larger problem….Especially since the article tells what to do and how to do it.

[Cheers sun-sentinel]