Bullies Using Peanuts as a Weapon

According to a Reuters report, there may be a cure for peanut allergies within the next half-decade. And it can't come fast enough, because these two recent headlines on the AllergyMoms blog have me worried about the direction our schools are going if peanut allergies continue to be deadly:

Bullies Use Peanut Butter to Threaten Children With Food Allergies

Peanut Allergy Has 13-Year-Old Charged With Felony

Rarely have bullies had such a potent tool to terrorize kids as they do with peanuts, and it shouldn't be a surprise that they would use it. You can get in serious trouble bringing even a butter knife or a toy gun to school, but a lunchbox full of peanut butter? Perfectly okay, although it can be way more deadly.

It's hard to know what the answer is to this kind of thing. Quarantining allergic kids for lunch obviously doesn't help if all it does is ID them for bullies who want to make threats of peanut exposure during the rest of the day. On the other hand, outlawing peanuts on school campuses raises the kind of resentment among students and their parents that probably makes this kind of harassment more likely.

A cure that renders the whole argument moot would be great. A world where adults take deadly allergies seriously and makes sure their children do too, greater. But I think we've got a better chance at the cure.