Kids smoking cane toads

Are Australian kids a little strange, or what?

Children as young as 12 are licking cane toads in an attempt to get high, the Northern Territory News has learned.

Some children and teenagers in Katherine and Arnhem Land are even drying out the skins of cane toads and rolling them up as joints to get a hit.

But Territory health authorities have warned that those who lick or smoke cane toads are dicing with death and stress that there are no hallucinogenic effects possible from bufo toxin, the toxin excreted by the introduced pest.

Director of emergency medicine at Royal Darwin Hospital Didier Palmer said anyone who ingests bufo toxin is more likely to die than get high from it.

"These are very foolish and dangerous acts," he said.

"Anyone who does this runs the very serious risk of seizures, a rapid loss of consciousness, cardio-vascular collapse and death.