Pubdate: Tue, 08 Nov 2005
Source: Charlotte Observer (NC)
Copyright: 2005 The Charlotte Observer
Contact:  http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/78
Author: Desmond Butler, Associated Press
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

DO YOU KNOW HIDDEN MEANING OF SNOWMAN?

`Snow' Is Street Slang For Cocaine -- And It's Showing Up On T-Shirts

NEW YORK - One of the hottest-selling T-shirts around the country shows
a simply drawn snowman with a menacing expression.

It's not Frosty's evil twin. The image popularized by
drug-dealer-turned-rapper Young Jeezy symbolizes those who sell a
white substance known on the street as snow: cocaine.

Anti-drug campaigners and education officials are alarmed, saying the
T-shirt and others like it are part of sophisticated marketing
campaigns using coded symbols for drug culture that parents and
teachers are not likely to understand. Some schools are banning kids
from wearing the snowman images.

"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."

Young Jeezy's hit debut album, "Let's Get It: Thug Motivation 101,"
peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard album charts. On one of his songs he
raps, "Get it? Jeezy the Snowman / I'm iced out, plus I got that snow,
man."

The shirt was first produced solely for Jeezy by Miskeen Originals, a
hip-hop fashion firm in New Jersey, the company says. The owner, Yaniv
Zaken, says his artists produced a handful for the rapper to wear on
TV appearances.

They then sold a larger batch to retailers, but pulled them when Zaken
discovered that his employees had not licensed the T-shirt from Jeezy.

"I wasn't sure what the snowman meant until the artist explained to me
that it was a drug dealer, the man delivering snow," Zaken said. "Now
everyone is selling the snowman -- all unlicensed. It's become a
streethood hit worldwide."

A spokesman for Young Jeezy's record label, Def Jam Records, confirmed
that the rapper held the rights to the snowman image but declined to
comment on complaints that it was sending children the wrong message.

"This is part of a phenomena in which parents have no idea what their
children are exposed to. There is a code that children are aware of
but not parents," says Sue Rusche, president and CEO of the anti-drug
group National Families In Action.

Rusche's organization has tried to pressure companies that they
believed were targeting children with drug messages, like fashion
companies marketing "heroin chic" in the 1990s. She was unaware of the
snowman T-shirt.

Mason says he'd like to have a snowman T-shirt but that his school in
Brooklyn has banned it. His mother, Autherine Mason, 34, said she had
been unaware of the snowman's meaning and wouldn't buy it for her son
now that she knows.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin