I'm a family physician in Norwalk, Ohio. Our local hospital does a community health assessment every five years or so, and a booklet with the current findings was just published in September. They did anonymous surveys of teenagers and discovered that some of them were putting alcohol-infused tampons up their rectums. So it apparently really does happen and is not just a local Twin Cities phenomenon.

The teens in Norwalk said they were doing it to prevent their breath smelling like alcohol, though I'm not sure that makes sense. I think alcohol gets partially metabolized by the lungs, the products of which you breathe out? That's how breathalizers work. It makes more sense to me that the Star Tribune has it right and alcohol going through the rectal mucosa hits the bloodstream faster.