Six Flags Great Adventure will stop selling pacifiers souveniers, critics say it encourages drug use

You have *GOT* to be kidding me right? Look, if a person wants to get high, they will get high regardless of whether an amusement park sells baby nipples or not. Hell, what are we next going to shut down all the Babies 'R Us store as co-consprirators in a massive drug ring? This is insane!

lata, jeremy

Just a sign of the uber-political correctness everyone has to have nowadays. I heard a group of clowns in the UK had to get "pie insurance," in case people weren't happy when they were hit in the face with a whipped cream pie. Even if something is just slightly suggestive, someone will complain.

Italic text shouldn't be used because of the sexual nature of it. ;)

Reading the article taught me more about drug paraphanalia (sp?) than just seeing a strobe light pacifier. Call me old fashioned (wow, I'm 18 and I'm saying that) but when I see a pacifier, I usually associate it with a baby.

Now I wonder if those kids were forced (assigned) to write this paper...
*** This post was edited by MiLLeNNiUMRiDeR 1/16/2004 9:08:09 AM ***

Leave it to the crackheads of the world to ruin a perfectly innocent pacifier, on the other hand most parks sell blinking and glowing things other than pacifiers that morons use. It just goes to show if someone complains about something using the right leverage/ argument anything can be banned.

IMO Pacifiers should be kept to the babies.

The ONLY reason kids/adults starting using them was because of new drugs.

For those who don't know people use the pacifiers to keep themselves from choking on their own tongue while using the drugs. Stupidty at it's best.

Kids starting using the pacifiers because adults starting using them because they saw them at clubs and though they wanted to use them, etc. etc.

I personally think this is a smart move. I know most Ohio schools have banned kids from using pacifiers. But hey if you wanna look like a "Big Drug Baby" go right ahead.

On top of that, at least SF is responding to guests suggestions ;)

"The Future of Roller Coasters"
-RollerCoasterGod
http://OhioThemeParks.com

I am just happy because this means kids will stop doing Ex. Thanks for saving us, Six Flags.

Adam

I was working at the college a few weeks back and saw a student with one of those light up pacifiers. I thought to myself, "What the heck? That looks so dumb! Is that the new thing students are doing to be cool?" My boss, who is fairly young himself, also wondered why he had it. Now I know why...
I am not much older then that student probably was, I am still working a degree myself, but I feel like I missed something somewhere. I usually know what all the cool new things are and I was completely unaware of what this was supposed to mean. I suppose it was a correct move to discontinue them, but I don't think many people really know what it means yet. It's good the students gave them a head's up on this. I hope kids don't start imitating this because in my opinion, it looks stupid!

To suggest that it encourages drug use is nonsense. The fact that most people are oblivious to this kind of use should be a pretty good indicator that much of its use is innocent.

Maybe it's some kind of weird regional cultural thing.

Actually Jeff it is a nationwide thing. They sold those pacifiers the last time I was at Knott's in California. Ecstacy is one of the biggest drugs of choice among teenagers today. If you think these kids are getting the lighted pacifiers to look cool you are all deluding yourself. These pacifiers are nothing but drug paraphernalia and the amusement parks are selling them for no other reason than to make a quick buck. I won't say that the park is encouraging drug use, however. Those kids using Ex already made that decision. My guess is they already have a pacifier to keep from swallowing their tongue. Now they just have a cooler looking pacifier that looks good at raves.

Hmmm.......ya learn something new everyday. I had no idea THAT is what they were used for. Now I feel old. LOL! I always associated pacifiers with babies. I have seen some of the teenagers with those lighted pacifiers and always thought they looked SOOOO stupid.

Does this mean they are going to stop selling lighters and straws as well? I mean, everytime I see a straw it reminds me of cocaine, especially at a park since I have no life and have nothing else to complain about. LOL! You know what? Dragster looks too much like a penis. Let's start a letter-writing campaign cause it offends me darnit!!! :-D

As far as attracting the "wrong" crowd to Great Adventure the hoodlums have been going there for years anyway. So what's new?

ANYTHING that is even remotely suggestive to ANYTHING nowadays is not safe. Do you guys remember the story about the little boy who was sued for sexual harrassment after *kissing* a girl? The kid had no idea what "sexual harrassment" was, but some slimeball lawyer and the girl's so-called parents thought it would be easy money.

As a radio personality once said, we live in The United States of the Easily Offended.

-Tina

*** This post was edited by coasterqueenTRN 1/16/2004 10:18:13 AM ***

You wouldn't use a pacifier to keep from swallowing your tongue on ecstasy. Not only is that absurd, it sounds like something from one of the goverment warning films like "Reefer Madness." If pacifiers are a trend among some people that use MDMA it's because the user feels a need to suck on something during the course of the high.

As for Great Adventure well, that's a pretty idiotic move by them. If they decided to ban every drug inspired fad, shouldn't they stop selling all tie-dyed products? Or how about they stop playing techno since it's a genre of music that started at raves and was often designed to intensify the MDMA high? And a pacifier is just a fad like a tie-dye, it's not actual paraphenalia like say, a Superman: Ultimate Escape beer bong...

I imagine for P.R reasons a park would respond to almost anything 200 12 year olds requested in a letter campaign.

This kind of reminds me of the old McDonalds coffee stirs from the 1970's. They used to have very small spoons on the end and people were using them to *sniff* their *product* from. McDonalds was forced to change the design.

Wood - anything else is an imitation

If anything should be banned from a park it should be those basketballs and the brats who run down the midways with them. :-D

Kick The Sky, I just thought they were buying these pacifiers to make an ass out of themselves.

-Tina

I will never look at a pacifier in the same way ever again. The innocense is lost. ;-)*** This post was edited by coasterqueenTRN 1/16/2004 11:38:02 AM ***

---

If you think these kids are getting the lighted pacifiers to look cool you are all deluding yourself.

---

I think you forget what it's like to be a teenager. I wore fat flourescent shoe laces and had a neck stopwatch (like Flavor Flav :)) in 8th grade. You know how stupid those look? It didn't matter because they were cool at the time.

No trend is too stupid for kids not to follow it for the purpose of acceptance.

How can you really call it drug paraphernalia anyway? I always thought that drug paraphernalia was something that aided in the way of ingesting the drug itself, i.e., rolling papers, blunts, bowls, bongs. Personally, I agree with Jeff. I've never heard of this before and I still do not see how this encourages drug use. So, are balloon companies now going to be asked to remove their product from the market because some people choose to fill them with nitrus (sp.?). And of course, the government needs to ban one dollar bills because I've heard many people tend to "sniff" through these bills. I also remember the sexual harassment story about the kid who kissed the girl. Leave it up to a lawyer to come up with something completely ridiculous like that.

This subject is a pretty big deal in the Akron and Cleveland Ohio area dance clubs.

Here's another shocker for those that still think it's not real...glowsticks are also used in the upcoming and ongoing teen drug ring. The top three things of choice for the new age drugs are: Pacifiers, Glow sticks, and bags of "Skittles." No joke. I have quite a few friends in the task force here and they take it quite seriously.

I don't think anyone should ban everything in the world, but I feel this falls under some questionable content here.

"The Future of Roller Coasters"
-RollerCoasterGod

Jeff, that's not as bad as parachute pants and those neon bracelets. Oh the horror!

The Michael Jackson jacket *was* cool though. ;-) Heh.

I was going to suggest glowsticks, as I am trying to act like I am *in tune* with the current popular drugs. Skittles???? What? How? I am almost afraid to ask. Anything can be *questionable* nowadays. All it takes is someone to look at something the wrong way and make a fuss about it then BAM it's now politically incorrect.

Whatever happened to rolling joints and getting somebody's older sibling to buy beer? ;-) Things were less complicated then. I remember when Kiss T-shirts were nearly banned from school cause rumor got around that it meant "Knights In Satan's Service". I guess backmasking records isn't considered a bad thing nowadays. We have to watch out for pacifiers and Renuzit bottles with subliminal messages.

-Tina

*** This post was edited by coasterqueenTRN 1/16/2004 11:55:49 AM ***

Those are passe, Tina.....besides, who could cook up something as complex as marijuana (pharmacologically speaking) in their bathtub at home...;)

Glowsticks, lighted baubles, pacifiers, etc....all make VERY good money at CityWalk....you don't suppose that they're making money off these drug using teens, do ya? ;)

Now I'm beginning to *wonder* about those lollipop things where you dip the lollipop into the powdered candy....kids these days, LOL. Of course, down here those bracelets are supposed to be about sexual activity among the schoolkids....or so the media claims.

Hmph. Now THAT is advanced. We used to just read about people's sexual activity on the bathroom walls and rely on good, old-fashioned gossip.

-Tina

I'm a high school teacher, so I see it all... in my opinion, pacifiers began primarily as an indication of drug use, but is now quickly becoming "mainstreamed". That is to say, kids are now using pacifiers without any knowledge of what it means, it just looks cool and trendy to them.

This happens a lot. If anyone has any memory, there was a time when a guy wearing a baseball cap backwards meant you were gay. Then straights caught on, and it doesn't exculsively mean that anymore. Same with guys and earrings.

I personally don't care for the pacifiers, but if this logic continues, there's a lot of stuff that could get banned, as some other posts have already pointed out... the door to censorship can start small...