Something Else for Parents to be Aware of - SNOWMEN

Here's the latest potential headache for parents- A Snowman T-Shirt. This gear is popularized by drug-dealer turned rapper, Young Jeezy. The shirt is meant to symbolize "snow", one of the street names for cocaine.

Some folks, especially educators and anti-drug advocates think it is a marketing ploy using street slang and images and allowing potential drug dealers and users to utilize the shirt as an unwritten and spoken "code" to either advertise sales or purchases of illicit drugs.

Dealers have done this for years. One of today's popular signs is to remove a certain hubcap of a car letting drug users (and cops by the way) know the occupants of the car are selling drugs. For a while, and still in some places, dealers would exhibit certain markers on their bodies to advertise. Ahhh, you gotta love marketing 101.

And if you don't think kids know what's up on the streets, here is a quote from an AP story on this particular T-shirt:

"The snowman is made of white, grainy stuff like sugar," said 12-year-old seventh-grader Mailik Mason, standing next to his mother in a Manhattan store selling the snowman shirts. "It has to do with a certain drug, crack or coke."

One of the lines from Jeezy's song is "Get it? Jeezy the Snowman / I'm iced out, plus I got that snow, man." Not much room for interpretation there I guess.

The shirt was originally produced and worn only by Jeezy. From there, his popularity made the shirt a hotly requested item. Then you know what happened, good ole capitalism kicked in and someone is getting rich. Jeezy holds the copyright to the snowman image- sorry Frosty.

Here is a clip from the AP story:

"Dr. Gilbert Botvin, director of the Institute for Prevention Research at Cornell University Medical College, has been studying what influences children to use drugs and alcohol. He believes that pop culture does play a role.

"The research tells us that influences coming from the media can have a profound effect on kids and influence them to use drugs," he says. "All of these things help to convey the impression that engaging in these behaviors using drugs is normal and that drugs might help you be successful or sexy or something."

Botvin says parents need to educate themselves about the media their kids are consuming and pressure schools to monitor what messages they allow students to advertise.

But sometimes it's hard to overcome the buzz on the street."

Banning particular clothing from being worn to school has always been a sticky wicket in this country. Seems if you ban one, you must ban them all.

My long time readers know that I have advocated school uniforms for years as a way to levelize the playing field for kids in public school. Uniforms seem to have worked well in private schools for years after all.

Remember though, just because a kid wants a t-shirt such as this, doesn't mean he or she is going to become a drug dealer, it is still, after all, up to the parents or care-givers of children to keep track of their lives and help children learn right from wrong at an early age. Steve