Illegal Possession of Pudding?

I have to credit our little neighborhood school. They do a good job of instructing our elementary kids to "say NO!" to drugs. So much so, that my daughter and her girlfriend tried boldly to tell my father he should not be going out to have a cigarette after having his dinner at Texas Roadhouse a while back. After enacting that scene for something like 15 years, I've deemed it fruitless. Still, I was really impressed at their caring and their sense of empowerment. That might be one of the strongest assets towards saying no to drugs, after all, as a child. Of course, knowing what substances are actually "drugs" helps too.

We ended up discussing drugs at dinner the other night. Abi told me a lie in an effort to side with a friend and keep from fighting with him. I told her that it wasn't okay to follow friends just to avoid conflict...

"What if he asked you to do drugs? Are you going to say 'yes,' just to avoid conflict? That's not okay!"

She seemed to see point, and immediately kicked into a school scripted "I know what to do!" mode. "No! I would say no! I know what the drugs are, Mommy. They taught us in school. Marijuana, alcohol, and uh... ta.... tapioca."

"Tapioca? Really?" I asked. "They told you tapioca is a drug?"

"Um. Yeah. It's that stuff that is in the cigarettes that Papa smokes."

Lightbulb.

"Tobacco, honey. It's called tobacco."

Sigh. Baby steps.