Subject: LSD flyers hit El Segundo -- L.A. Times article AUTHORITIES DISMISS FLYERS ABOUT
From: dgross@polyslo.csc.calpoly.edu (Dave Gross)
Subject: LSD flyers hit El Segundo -- L.A. Times article
AUTHORITIES DISMISS FLYERS ABOUT LSD AS WORK OF PRANKSTERS
* Drugs: The warnings, which have surfaced over the years,
appear at an El Segundo school. Some attribute their
spread to people who mean well but are misinformed.
by Jim Newton, Times Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times, 18 April 1992
Posted without permission
A puzzling hoax is frightening parents from coast to coast, most recently in El
Segundo, with fake warnings that their children are being exposed to new and
potentially lethal forms of the psychedelic drug LSD.
The warnings -- once taken seriously by police, drug experts and doctors -- are
being emphatically dismissed as a cruel joke. Yet, the rumors defy official
attempts to squelch them, and as recently as this month the flyers turned up at
St. Anthony's Catholic school in El Segundo, where administrators sent them
home to parents.
According to the one-page flyer, the new forms of the drug, some laced with
strychnine, are being sold to students as "tattoos" and designed to be absorbed
through the skin. Parents are asked to be on the lookout for the drug and its
symptoms.
"A young child could happen upon these and have a FATAL TRIP," warns the
typewritten sheet sent to parents of students at St. Anthony's. "It is also
believed that little children could be given a free 'TATTOO' by the other
children who want to have some fun cultivating new customers without the
children's knowledge."
Drug experts say there is no truth to that.
"We don't know where these come from, but they're bogus," said Ralph B.
Lochridge, a spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration's Los Angeles
office. "It's like UFO sightings. They show up everywhere."
Authorities do not know who is responsible or what their motives might be.
Some attribute the flyers to pranksters, others to well-intentioned people with
incomplete information.
Washington drug authorities said the phony LSD warnings have been cropping up
across the country for several years, starting on the East Coast in such places
as Upstate New York and Pennsylvania and gradually working their way West.
Most often, the flyers appear in small towns, but they have found their way
into police stations, union mailers and major hospitals.
Although the hoax is centered in the United States, similar flyers have even
been found in Belize, Canada, Europe and Mexico, said Cornelius Dougherty, a
DEA spokesman in Washington.
The flyers are particularly hard to debunk, officials say, because they contain
some accurate information about LSD and its effects. That makes them
convincing, even to people who know something about the drug. But the flyers'
main contention -- that a new form of the drug has appeared and that children
are especially susceptible to it -- is untrue, authorities said.
"They're like a chain letter," said David Langness, a spokesman for the
Hospital Council of Southern California, which represents about 250 hospitals
in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, Ventura, San Bernardino and Santa Barbara
counties. "They capitalize on anti-drug hysteria, and as far as we can
determine, they are a total hoax."
Langness said he did not know of any youngster admitted to a Southern
California hospital because of the effects of ingesting an LSD "tattoo."
DEA agents said that although LSD can be absorbed through the skin, as the
flyer notes, that is the least effective way of getting high from the drug,
which usually is taken orally.
Although some officials said the phenomenon has seemed to ebb since a peak of
activity in the late 1980s, a group of parents expressed alarm last week when
a flyer surfaced in El Segundo.
"I was completely baffled by this, and I was certainly worried," said Arlin
Alonzo, whose son attends kindergarten at St. Anthony's. "Here's this note,
which was the most disturbing news I've had in quite a while."
Mary Williams, whose 6-year-old son attends the school, said she was frightened
by the warning. "We sat down right away and talked about it. I don't know why
someone would do this."
St. Anthony's Principal Eileen Deck, who had the flyer sent to parents, said
she was surprised to learn from a reporter that the warning is a fake, and she
promised to alert parents.
The warning, she said, came to her attention through a parent who saw the flyer
at his job and thought other parents should be alerted. In addition to its
warnings about LSD tattoos, the flyer warns of tabs of the drug decorated with
Bart Simpson, Mickey Mouse and other cartoon characters.
"This is a new way of selling acid by appealing to young children," the flyer
warns.
That, too, is a lie, officials say.
"The cartoon characters go all the way back in the history of LSD," Dougherty
said. "Obviously, Bart Simpson is new, but we don't see any evidence of an
effort to market this to young children."
Dougherty and other drug experts urged school administrators, hospital
officials and others to treat any anonymous warnings with skepticism. But they
acknowledged that the unsigned flyers can be hard for well-intentioned
authorities to ignore.
Often they are distributed because officials who happen upon them want to make
sure parents are not denied what appears to be an important warning about a
serious subject.
"You feel like if it's happening, you want to let parents know," Deck said.
"We didn't make a big issue of it, but we wanted to pass it along."
--
************************ dgross@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU ***************************
"And now, with time, space expanded also... The whole atmosphere seemed duct-
ile, and spun endlessly out into great spaces surrounding me on every side."
-- Fitz Hugh Ludlow
From dog.ee.lbl.gov!ucbvax!ulysses!ulysses.att.com!csh Fri Jan 24 09:26:33 PST 1992
Article 33346 of alt.folklore.urban:
Path: dog.ee.lbl.gov!ucbvax!ulysses!ulysses.att.com!csh
>From: csh@ulysses.att.com (Charles Harris[jar])
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Blue star Bart
Message-ID: <16150@ulysses.att.com>
Date: 24 Jan 92 00:10:14 GMT
Sender: netnews@ulysses.att.com
Lines: 27
Excerpted from The Newark Star-Ledger, Jan. 23 1992:
LSD scare resurfaces
in anonymous letters
(by Lenny Melisurgo)
It seems to happen every year: Anonymous letters are circulated
through various towns and schools, warning parents to be on the
lookout for tiny stamps and decals that are laced with LSD....
One such notice has begun making the rounds in South Amboy. But
police there and in other parts of Middlesex County stressed yesterday
there's no hard evidence that LSD stamps are being sold or used in
the area....
"The notices come out every year," said Woodbridge police Lt. Roy
Hoppock....
No one seems to know where the latest warning originated....
The letter warns of a form of decal called "blue star." The drug
is distributed on a small sheet of paper containing blue stars, each
about the size of a pencil eraser and soaked with LSD....
In addition, the notice advises that LSD is sold on brightly colored
tabs that resemble postage stamps and bear pictures of clowns,
butterflies, Superman, Mickey Mouse, other Disney characters or Bart
Simpson, the mischeivous, spike-haired youth from "The Simpsons" cartoon....
Area police said LSD stamps, which are known on the street as "tabs"
or "blotter acid," have not surfaced in Middlesex County since the
summer of 1990. At that time, Woodbridge police arrested a 19-year-old
township man who was charged with selling 20 LSD-laced stamps bearing
the face of Bart Simpson....
From dog.ee.lbl.gov!hellgate.utah.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!spool.mu.edu!umn.edu!csus.edu!nic.csu.net!koko.csustan.edu!rat!polyslo.csc.calpoly.edu!dgross Sun Apr 19 12:49:00 PDT 1992
Article 39381 of alt.folklore.urban:
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>From: dgross@polyslo.csc.calpoly.edu (Dave Gross)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban,alt.drugs
Subject: LSD flyers hit El Segundo -- L.A. Times article
Keywords: tattoos, strychnine, LSD, urban legend, Bart Simpson, FATAL TRIP
Message-ID: <1992Apr18.184757.9655@rat.csc.calpoly.edu>
Date: 18 Apr 92 18:47:57 GMT
Article-I.D.: rat.1992Apr18.184757.9655
Reply-To: dgross@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (Dave Gross)
Organization: Zen Fascists for Jerry Brown
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AUTHORITIES DISMISS FLYERS ABOUT LSD AS WORK OF PRANKSTERS
* Drugs: The warnings, which have surfaced over the years,
appear at an El Segundo school. Some attribute their
spread to people who mean well but are misinformed.
by Jim Newton, Times Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times, 18 April 1992
Posted without permission
A puzzling hoax is frightening parents from coast to coast, most recently in El
Segundo, with fake warnings that their children are being exposed to new and
potentially lethal forms of the psychedelic drug LSD.
The warnings -- once taken seriously by police, drug experts and doctors -- are
being emphatically dismissed as a cruel joke. Yet, the rumors defy official
attempts to squelch them, and as recently as this month the flyers turned up at
St. Anthony's Catholic school in El Segundo, where administrators sent them
home to parents.
According to the one-page flyer, the new forms of the drug, some laced with
strychnine, are being sold to students as "tattoos" and designed to be absorbed
through the skin. Parents are asked to be on the lookout for the drug and its
symptoms.
"A young child could happen upon these and have a FATAL TRIP," warns the
typewritten sheet sent to parents of students at St. Anthony's. "It is also
believed that little children could be given a free 'TATTOO' by the other
children who want to have some fun cultivating new customers without the
children's knowledge."
Drug experts say there is no truth to that.
"We don't know where these come from, but they're bogus," said Ralph B.
Lochridge, a spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration's Los Angeles
office. "It's like UFO sightings. They show up everywhere."
Authorities do not know who is responsible or what their motives might be.
Some attribute the flyers to pranksters, others to well-intentioned people with
incomplete information.
Washington drug authorities said the phony LSD warnings have been cropping up
across the country for several years, starting on the East Coast in such places
as Upstate New York and Pennsylvania and gradually working their way West.
Most often, the flyers appear in small towns, but they have found their way
into police stations, union mailers and major hospitals.
Although the hoax is centered in the United States, similar flyers have even
been found in Belize, Canada, Europe and Mexico, said Cornelius Dougherty, a
DEA spokesman in Washington.
The flyers are particularly hard to debunk, officials say, because they contain
some accurate information about LSD and its effects. That makes them
convincing, even to people who know something about the drug. But the flyers'
main contention -- that a new form of the drug has appeared and that children
are especially susceptible to it -- is untrue, authorities said.
"They're like a chain letter," said David Langness, a spokesman for the
Hospital Council of Southern California, which represents about 250 hospitals
in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, Ventura, San Bernardino and Santa Barbara
counties. "They capitalize on anti-drug hysteria, and as far as we can
determine, they are a total hoax."
Langness said he did not know of any youngster admitted to a Southern
California hospital because of the effects of ingesting an LSD "tattoo."
DEA agents said that although LSD can be absorbed through the skin, as the
flyer notes, that is the least effective way of getting high from the drug,
which usually is taken orally.
Although some officials said the phenomenon has seemed to ebb since a peak of
activity in the late 1980s, a group of parents expressed alarm last week when
a flyer surfaced in El Segundo.
"I was completely baffled by this, and I was certainly worried," said Arlin
Alonzo, whose son attends kindergarten at St. Anthony's. "Here's this note,
which was the most disturbing news I've had in quite a while."
Mary Williams, whose 6-year-old son attends the school, said she was frightened
by the warning. "We sat down right away and talked about it. I don't know why
someone would do this."
St. Anthony's Principal Eileen Deck, who had the flyer sent to parents, said
she was surprised to learn from a reporter that the warning is a fake, and she
promised to alert parents.
The warning, she said, came to her attention through a parent who saw the flyer
at his job and thought other parents should be alerted. In addition to its
warnings about LSD tattoos, the flyer warns of tabs of the drug decorated with
Bart Simpson, Mickey Mouse and other cartoon characters.
"This is a new way of selling acid by appealing to young children," the flyer
warns.
That, too, is a lie, officials say.
"The cartoon characters go all the way back in the history of LSD," Dougherty
said. "Obviously, Bart Simpson is new, but we don't see any evidence of an
effort to market this to young children."
Dougherty and other drug experts urged school administrators, hospital
officials and others to treat any anonymous warnings with skepticism. But they
acknowledged that the unsigned flyers can be hard for well-intentioned
authorities to ignore.
Often they are distributed because officials who happen upon them want to make
sure parents are not denied what appears to be an important warning about a
serious subject.
"You feel like if it's happening, you want to let parents know," Deck said.
"We didn't make a big issue of it, but we wanted to pass it along."
E-Mail Fredric L. Rice / The Skeptic Tank