This is one of those stories … you see the headline and you think, “urban myth”.

When I was 12, maybe 13, kids my age heard, from our elders, that by smoking dried banana peels a silly person could get high — achieve a state of altered consciousness.

The product was called mellow yellow, and it prompted a popular song (not to be taken seriously) by a singer named Donovan — perhaps best-known now as the father of the actress Ione Skye. But I digress.

Mellow yellow was a hoax. It ruined a lot of frying pans, but did not get anyone high.

Smoking ants sounds at least as silly … but it turns out kids in the UAE seem to believe a person can get high by smoking the local red ants … and some of the kids here actually do it — as The National reported a few years ago.

According to the story, the key is the formic acid carried in the bodies of red ants. When burned, the acid gives off poisonous gases that can get a kid high — and also hurt his or her lungs.

According to the story:

The Ministry of Health has not yet conducted research on the effects of smoking the ants. “We are well aware this practice exists. More than a third of teenagers have tried it and some as young as 13,” said Dr Wedad Maidoor, the head of the ministry’s tobacco control team. “However, our research only identifies the prevalence and not the side-effects of the practice because we have only recently become aware of it.”

Not unlike the U.S., health agencies here often give dire warnings of illicit drug use by teens and even pre-teens) and in tomorrow’s newspaper we have a story about how kids as young as 10 have been offered heroin — which is a very serious and very illegal substance here.

But back to the smoking ants. Which apparently is not illegal. Just really lame.

In the original story, a street-smart young man said: “It’s as easy as picking up the ants, crushing them and then sprinkling them like you would do with marijuana over your tobacco. Then you get high.”

So, does it work? It seems as if idle youth may still be smoking red ants … but medical people now say no “high” is to be obtained that way.

Sounded more plausible than “mellow yellow”, actually.