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Culture

Beware Pending Facebook Wall Share Titled 'OMG! Video Games Literally Make Kids High!'

Mario gives up mushrooms for Molly

Scott Shackford | 1.24.2014 4:50 PM

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Large image on homepages | Andrea La Rosa / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND
(Andrea La Rosa / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND)
I don't get it.
Credit: Andrea La Rosa / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND

Top video game blog site Kotaku has taken note of an ecstasy/MDMA-based street drug making the rounds in Europe called "Nintendo," with pills even stamped with the company logo. It's been seen in Belgium.

For gamers, the news has resulted and lots and lots and lots of jokes about Mario and mushrooms and the old Nintendo Tetris-knockoff called Dr. Mario. Some Kotaku posters also joked about how selling the drug could be an actual revenue strategy by Nintendo, given that the company is not doing very well right now on the market with its most recent console.

Given the recent Smarties "scandal" it's worth nothing the existence of the drug variation in the event coverage spreads through the media and, as inevitably as the telephone game, morphs into somebody half-reading something and trying to claim that Nintendo itself is trying to turn little kids onto drugs. After all, that's what some people say about Walt Disney. (Warning: previous link is like a TV Tropes site for conspiracies and you may never, ever escape, especially when you get to the one about Beyonce being possessed by a demon named Sasha Fierce during her 2013 Super Bowl halftime show.)

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Scott Shackford is a policy research editor at Reason Foundation.

CultureWar on DrugsWorldSynthetic DrugsVideo GamesEuropeDrugs
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