Question:
My mother in law works at the Fayette Urban County Health Department in
Lexington, Kentucky. Last night she called my wife and told her about a
memo they received from a DARE officer, it contains both the "Flashing
Headlights" UL and the "Bluestar Tattoo" UL. I obtained a copy from her
today, and figured that I should post it for your enjoyment - you don't get
2 for 1 every day. If you would like for me to scan and post it or email it
to you, let me know. Memo follows (very bad grammar included):
PUBLIC NOTICE
The police officer that works with the DARE Program passed this warning out
to us to share it with anyone that drives and/or has children
Please forward this to all people you know.
If you are driving after dark and see an on-coming car with no head lights
on, do not flash your headlights at them! This is a new common gang member
initiation "game" that goes like this: The new member being initiated
drives along with no headlights on and the first car to flash their lights
at him, is now his "target". He is now required to chase that car and shoot
at or into the car in order to complete his initiation requirements. Make
sure you share this information with any driver in you family and anyone
else you can.
WARNING:
A form of tattoos called "Blue Star"is being sold to children. It is a
small piece of paper containing a blue star. They are the size of a pencil
eraser and each star is soaked with LSD. The drug is absorbed through the
skin by simply handling the paper. There is also brightly colored tattoos
resembling postage stamps that have pictures of the following: Superman,
Mickey Mouse, Clowns, Disney Characters, Bart Simpson, Butterflies. Each
one is wrapped in foil. This is a very new way of selling acid, by
appealing to young children. These are laced with drugs. If your child
gets a hold of any of the above: do not handle them! These are known to
react quickly and some are laced with strychnine.
Please feel free to reproduce this article and distribute it within your
community and workplace.
Answer:
Well, LSD is frequently distributed as small (half-centimeter on
a side) squares of blotter paper with colorful designs on them (see
http://www.hyperreal.org/ for an archive of scanned blotter art). And
in fact, I believe some LSD has been distributed on blotter paper with
Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer's Apprentice on it.. All the pictures
they list are likely, although perhaps only one picture to a sheet of
paper. Oddly, this article seems to say that these little scraps of
paper are also tattoos.
LSD can in fact be absorbed through the skin; however, this requires
quite large concentrations since the skin isn't very permeable.
People handle the aforementioned pieces of blotter paper with no
particular effects. This is also unnecessary if the paper is being
passed off as a tattoo -- normally one licks such a tattoo to apply
it, which is much more likely to expose you to anything dissolved in
the paper (although you'd lose some by not swallowing the paper).
LSD is also slightly unstable; it may eventually break down upon
exposure to light and air, so it is oftern distributed wrapped in
foil.
Why drug dealers would go for young children I have no idea; they're
not exactly rich, nor are they going to easily get their parents to
buy them drugs ("Mommy, mommy, I want to see the purple people eaters
again!"). I suppose part of the problem is that many people, while on
drugs, act very much liek children. Perhaps because adults really
don't play very much, or perhaps because their past experience is no
use to them while their brain isn't working right... but for whatever
reason, cartoon images seem to be populer with drug users (see the
"Teletubby hash pipe" thread here... No, I don't mean that the posters
were on drugs, not that I could tell...)
But the most interesting part about the article is how they managed to
toss in the strychnine bit. This is another famous urban legend,
thoroughly debunked by (among others) a large government study.
I would guess that this addition, like the "take LSD, look at the sun,
go blind" story, was added by some "well-meaning" vector in order to
make people more afraid of this horrible menace that is corrupting our
youth. In fact, this story looks like it passed through the hands of
someone who knows a fair bit about LSD and added some details to
improve the impression of voracity. This person may even have known
what nonsense they were spreading, but figured it was okay because
"drugs are bad". It makes it awful hard to find out what the real
dangers of taking drugs are...