Chewing Gum

At least seven Marina High School students, including five drill team members, were recovering Thursday after they unknowingly chewed LSD-laced Bazooka bubble gum that had been given to them by other students, parents and authorities said. Several law enforcement officials said this was the first time they have heard of chewing gum used as a way to transmit drugs. But some students on campus said that lacing bubble gum with LSD, or "acid," is a new fad.

You are what you chew -- that's what the crowded gum aisle seems to suggest. Spicy cinnamon sticks, spearmint pellets with whitening sparkles, explode-in-your-mouth strawberry-lime pillows: There's a flavor and form to suit every personality. Soon, gums may offer more than just tongue-tingling tastes and tooth-brightening properties. Scientists are probing for evidence that habitual chewing can make us healthier and more alert, not to mention thinner and better at remembering names.

A 9,000-year-old piece of chewing gum, still bearing the teeth marks of a Stone-Age adolescent, was unearthed in Swe den this summer--a testament to mankind's deep-seated need to gnaw on flavored rubber. No word on whether the gum was found stuck to the bottom of a prehistoric theater seat. But if it's anything like its modern cousins, the 9,000-year-old blob of honey-sweetened resin probably lost its taste 8,999 years, 364 days, 23 hours and 59 minutes ago.

The skies become anything but friendly to smokers Sunday, and Charles Sleichter couldn't be happier. Like an air conditioning salesman sensing a summer heat wave, Sleichter predicts that sales of his company's "smoking alternative" chewing gum will take off when a smoking ban on almost all U.S. airline flights takes effect Sunday. The potential is "phenomenal," said Sleichter, president of Advantage Life Products Inc. in Laguna Hills.

The skies will become anything but friendly to smokers Sunday, and Charles Sleichter couldn't be happier. Like an air-conditioning salesman sensing a summer heat wave, Sleichter predicts that sales of his company's "smoking alternative" chewing gum will take off when a smoking ban on almost all U.S. airline flights takes effect Sunday. The potential is "phenomenal," said Sleichter, president of Advantage Life Products Inc. in Laguna Hills.

Police sought to execute an arrest warrant Wednesday for a man suspected of making seven Marina High School students ill last December by giving them LSD-laced bubble gum. Being sought is Luis Solis, 20, who lived with his parents in Huntington Beach and has disappeared. "We're doing everything we can to locate him," said Police Lt. Dan Johnson. "We think he may have returned to Mexico."

This weekend, Dubble Bubble holds its sixth annual competition to find that one person in the United States who blows 'em big -- chewing gum bubbles, that is. The former titleholder, 11-year-old Aina Cambridge of Lakewood, competed with 1 million other contestants and won her crown and prize money back in 2003. She blew a whopping 21-incher that landed her a space in the finals in New York held live on the "Today" show.

Even before she gets out of bed in the morning, she's ready for her first fix. Eyes closed, sleepy fingers fumbling at the bedside table, she seizes the silver packet, expertly extracts a single white tablet and places it in her mouth. Ah, nicotine gum. Dana Yudovin quit smoking 12 years ago, after a quarter-century of puffing a pack a day. But now she's hooked on the gum, gobbling up a dozen or more pieces a day.

Nicotine gum, chewed by smokers trying to kick the habit, is probably of little value in the way it is most often used, researchers said last week. The finding was based on a study of 315 smokers, some of whom were given the gum and others a look-alike without nicotine.