gum, conduct cuts and diets

There is something magical about gum when you are a kid I guess. Something to make you want to chew the same piece all day long, take it out for meals and put it back in and chew it some more. The other morning my daughter and I were getting in the car for school, and I noticed she was chewing gum. I asked her where she had gotten it, and she informed me that it was from the day before, but not to worry because she had taken it out of her mouth to "brush her teeth and stuff." I made her spit it in the woods at her school. She didn't want to and told me that it is probably poisonous for animals. I made her anyway and will probably find a belly-up woodland critter with a piece of chewing gum lodged in his furry little throat.
Another thing about gum that I find magical is that even though kids always get caught for chewing gum in school, they just cannot seem to resist chewing the stuff. When I catch them, they even go to the garbage can and then watch me to see if I'm looking. If I don't look, they will pretend to throw it away in order to keep it and chew it more. If I do look, sometimes they will bite it in 1/2 and only throw part of it away so they can, again, keep it and chew it more. I have even threatened to make them scrape it from the desks, but it doesn't seem to slow them down. I had a teacher who kept all the scraped off gum in a big jar on his desk. I think if I did that, I would loose my appetite everytime I looked at it. I guess it would help with my new diet plan at least. Not sure if it would inspire the kids to give up their gum though!