Conference moira::parenting_v3

    Steve:
    
    	I'm glad you posted this.  My husband (in MRO) received a copy of
    the "Blue Star" message from an "anonymous" type account on a node in
    Shrewsbury, and tried tracking down the source.  The person using the
    account said she forwarded the message "with the pre-approval of 'SHR
    Employee Activities'" but wouldn't reveal the source of the
    information.  She said she would forward his inquiry to the
    "appropriate person"; so far he hasn't heard anything more.  
    
    	This type of message makes me angry.  I wish people would attempt
    to authenticate information like this before sending it over the
    network.  
    
    	It also makes me sad.  It's so easy to believe that something like
    this could exist.
    
    	Well, I guess my bubble has been burst for today...
    
    
    - Terry
    

    I received no less than four copies of this - as well as two copies of
    an explanation that the distribution was 'fully authorized' by some
    internal personnel organization - as well as a single copy of an
    admission the the episode was "probably" untrue - but made, anyway, for
    a healthy component of a child's drug education program.

    Geez ! 7 different E-MAIL transmissions for such bull-stuff. 

    Just as bad, IMHO, as chain letters.

    L.

>    as well as a single copy of an
>    admission the the episode was "probably" untrue - but made, anyway, for
>    a healthy component of a child's drug education program.

<FLAME ON>

Beautiful, f*g beautiful.  Fables are a healthy component of drug education 
programs.  No wonder we are losing the war.

<FLAME OFF>

Clay

I agree that we should avoid spreading the legends, but if I tried to
track down every instance of the Blue Star tatoo or the kid whose dying
wish was to get in the Guiness Book of Records for most postcards that
has come across my terminal, then I'd do nothing but that.  I think
it's enough to reply to the person who sent it and let it propagate
backwards if it's going to.  There's always going to be someone who
hears it, believes it and sends it out in good faith.

                                     >>>==>PStJTT

    The really sad part about this "rumor" is that it could very well be
    true in todays society.
    
    
    BTW: When I was younger I hung around "the wrong crowd".  More than
    once, I saw tabs of acid with cartoon characters on it.
    
    
    Peace,
    
    Mike

    .5
    
    Maybe, but I bet they were selling them to each other for $$, not
    insidiously handing them out as Halloween candy to tots. The danger 
    in the urban legend is the idea that some anonymous "they" are out 
    there trying to do evil to "us" and our kids. 
    
    Lucy

    As I understand it, personnel allowed the circulation of this "legend"
    because it *was* true, even though at this time (this year?) the 
    incident did not occur.
    
    This is more than legend.   In very early eighties, there was a drug bust
    in the community where I lived, that destroyed a lab making these
    things.  We had received the propaganda from the children's school, and
    apparently the story was true.  The community was not Urban - so knock
    off the "urban legend" stuff - this was yuppie land in Massachusetts.
    
    The point is - don't be too careful, and don't knock the "legend".  If
    you receive it too many times, the delete key is handy.
    
    
    -m

    No, Madeline, this is well established nonsense.  It is not true now,
    and never was.  LSD cannot be absorbed through the skin in this way.
    
    There is also no need to wax indignant at the term "urban legend."  It
    means a legend relating to contemporary, urbanized, life (as opposed
    to, say, fairy godmothers, Norse sagas, or Greek gods), and doesn't
    have any "ghetto" implications.  Yuppie land in Massachusetts is an
    ideal setting for urban legand.  I think you could even have a rural
    urban legend;  let's see: playing rap music backwards to your dairy
    cows mill cut off milk production.
    
    I can remember when the early Engineering Net was first being connected
    across multiple sites, and one of the first things coming across was
    a version of this Blue Star hoax.  Those were the good old days, when
    no self-respecting Engineer could imagine that any non-engineer
    could deserve access to a _network_, or be able to use it.
    
    		- Bruce

Re: .7

Can you provide names, dates and places?  It would be interesting to
call the police in that town and get their confirmation.

                          >>>==>PStJTT

From:	ORION::EPPES "The owls are not what they seem  24-Oct-1990 1356" 24-OCT-1990 14:05:08.15
To:	NH_MA_FYI
CC:	Moi
Subj:	"Blue Star Acid Tattoos" story making the rounds - IT'S NOT TRUE!

Hi, all.  Once again, the infamous "Blue Star Acid Tattoos" story is making the
network rounds.  If you receive this from another source, please inform that
source that this story is not true.  It has been around, in varying forms, for
several years, and is documented in Jan Harold Brunvand's book "Curses! Broiled
Again!  The Hottest Urban Legends Going."  Jan Harold Brunvand is a professor 
at the Universty of Utah who has been collecting and documenting such urban
legends for a number of years.  

I have a copy of "Curses! Broiled Again!" in my office.  The "Blue Star Acid"
story is documented in this book; it's too long to type in completely,
but here are some excerpts:

	LSD may be more a part of the 1960s than the 1980s [the book is
	copyrighted 1989 -NE], having largely died out as a drug of choice.
	However, a long-discredited rumor about the drug reappeared in a
	big way during late 1986.  [Brunvand] got dozens of reports -- from
	four states in one week alone in early 1987 -- about a kind of LSD
	called "Blue Star acid."  The story just wasn't true, but the 
	flashbacks continued.

	Here are the contents of a flier that one reader sent me:  "A WARNING
	TO ALL PARENTS.  According to police, a form of tattoo--BLUE STAR--is
	readily available to young children.  It is a small sheet of white
	paper containing blue stars the size of a pencil eraser.  Each STAR
	is impregnated with LSD and can be removed from the paper to be placed
	in the mouth.  Absorption can occur through the skin by simply 
	handling the paper tattoo!"

	The spurious information, and even the capitalized words, vary only
	slightly among many photocopies of this warning circulated around
	the country.  Sometimes a specific source, such as the San Diego police
	or a Kansas "drug squad" is mentioned.  Most warnings also include
	references to small colored paper "tabs" in circulation, likewise
	impregnated with acid and bearing the likeness of Mickey Mouse, 
	Superman, or other cartoon characters.

	It is tricky to disprove the "Blue Star acid" rumors definitively,
	since some forms of what narcotics agents call "blotter acid" or
	"paper acid" -- paper impregnated with LSD -- did, in facrt, circulate
	during the 1960s and 1970s.  Some were imprinted with cartoon
	characters, and police sometimes refer to them as "Snoopies."
	Occasionally, even today, blotter acid shows up in drug-enforcement
	efforts.

	But seldom, if ever, was blotter acid distributed to children, and
	never was an actual paper tattoo or transfer used to transport LSD.

	A 1980 New Jersey State Police Narcotic Bureau bulletin did warn,
	"Children may be susceptible to this type of cartoon stamp *believing
	it a tatto transfer*" ([Brunvand's] emphasis).  But there is no
	evidence that any actual cartoon "tatoos" containing LSD have circulated
	among children.
	...
	Recently [Brunvand] spoke to William Hopkins, director of the Bureau of 
	Research for the State of New York Division of Substance Abuse Services,
	who described a statewide survey that his unit conducted in February
	and March 1988 in which the unit looked for problems with the stuff.
	A questionnaire was sent to 405 New York law-enforcement agencies after
	thousands of anonymous letters were circulated throughout the state
	suggesting that "Blue Star Acid" was an "impending disaster."  The
	survey asked the agencies to report their cases involving LSD -- 
	particularly acid in the "Blue Star" form -- during the period 1985
	through 1987.

	"And I'll bet you found very little 'Blue Star Acid'," [Brunvand] said.

	"Next to nothing -- almost nothing at all!" Mr. Hopkins replied.

	What "next to nothing" translates into in terms of statistics - for
	example, in 1987 -- was that out of the 405 law-enforcement agencies
	surveyed, 342 (84.4 percent) had no cases involving LSD of any type,
	and only 3 departments (1.0 percent) had more than twenty LSD cases.
	In the very few instances where LSD cases were reported, less than
	half involved a blue star or cartoon imprinted on absorbent paper.  The
	figures for 1985 and 1986 were comparable.

	The cautiously worded conclusion that Hopkins' office drew from the
	results of the survey was that these results "tend to support our
	initial impression that the anonymous letters warning about Blue Star
	LSD was a hoax and should be treated as such."  In the cover letter
	transmitting the survey results, the advice furnished to the state's
	drug agencies was to "discourage the reprinting and circulation" of
	the fliers because "the rumored spread of LSD is generally unfounded."

Below is the latest incarnation of this story that's making its way around the
network.  This year's variation is the addition of Bart Simpson to the list
of tainted cartoon characters...  

Please feel free to forward this message.
							-- Nina

P.S.  Of course this does not mean not to warn children to be careful....

    What a coincidence!  I am home on maternity leave and haven't read 
    parenting in several weeks.  Today my first grader came home from
    school with a warning about the "blue Star acid".  The warning was a
    photocopy of what looked like it came from a mail message sent by
    e-mail.  This was from a grade school in Marlboro.  I understand it is
    an urban legend but I choose to use it as an opportunity to warn my son
    about strangers and drugs.
    
    joan

    I asked my husband about this (he is a police officer) and he said that
    this stuff is true.  He said that rumors DO go out about this and they
    should not be ignored.  He has been through drug school through
    part of his training and they go over things like this.
    
    - Sandy
      

	Sandy, 

	I don't mean to cast aspersions on your husband, but...  Unless he is 
willing to provide numbers of cases/specific details, that kind of reply is 
just not helpful.  It adds heat but no light.  I mean, it sounds really 
impressive that he is a cop and says this happens.  But what is "this stuff"
and "things like this"?  Is "this stuff" LSD abuse by adults?  Sure, that 
happens. But it doesn't mean that people are giving LSD to kids.  Are "things 
like this" blotter acid?  Sure that exists.  That does not mean that acid-laced 
transfers exist.  All your reply has done is, without any specifics or 
documented evidence, to give a big push to the rumour because "the police said 
it was so."        

	For example, recently, a nurse I know, passed on this memo to a bunch of 
people.  They thought, "Wow! a nurse sent this.  She's a health professional, 
she must know."  Well, she got the same anonymous memo over the tube just like
we did and just passed it along.  Her source was no better than ours, but the
memo is given more credence because of her profession.  (BTW, when we talked to 
the drug department of the local police, they said that the closest thing they 
could come up with was an *adult* male who OD'd on LSD from microdots (NOT 
transfers or tattoos) *9* years ago.  Local = Greenville, S.C. Greenville is 
one of the three largest cities in our state (in fact in may be the largest 
now), so if it was happening anywhere is S.C., it would be happening here.)

	Why should I care so much?  Three reasons.  1) As a system manager, I am 
reponsible to appropriate use of the network.  This memo is nothing but a chain 
letter (no matter how well intentioned the people who forward it are) and chain 
letters are specifically forbidden by Corp Personnel Policy 5.64.  2) As a 
parent, I want to be worrying about REAL threats, not hoaxes 3) Most 
importantly, as concerned citizen, I want to stop the spread of this memo 
because, according William Hopkins, Director of the Bureau of Research for the 
State of New York Division of Substance Abuse Services, drug-abuse officers are 
concerned that fliers of this kind could actually create a problem where none 
exists.

	Because of this, from now on I'm going to take a rather heavy-handed 
moderator approach to this situation.  If you put in a note that says, "this 
rumour is true" without any substantiating evidence.  (I.e. the name of a Drug 
Enforcement Officer that I can call directly for confirmation of details (no 
"Friend of a Friend" sources), I will summarily delete your note. 

	Sandy, 
	
	If your husband can provide details, I would be glad to hear them/allow 
them to be entered.   

	Sorry, if I'm coming down too hard on this issue, but this is only one 
of several fronts on which I am dealing with this issue and I'm getting 
frustrated beyond belief! 

    
Tracey 
Parenting co-mod and host

Furthermore, historically, police departments have been as bad about
circulating this particular urban legend as anyone else.  In fact,
during the last cycle (about two years ago, I think), the warning
was being circulated by a bunch of local police departments, who 
had picked it up from a law enforcement journal ... who had apparently
gotten it out of the same amorphous store of eternally circulating
urban folklore as everyone else who gets inspired to photocopy it and
post it on a bulletin board.  Overpoweringly authorative -- and utterly
bogus.

	-Neil

    
    Because of their familiarity with legal procedures, sometimes police
    departments are more sensitive to the need for evidence than other
    organizations.  Not always _truth_ mind you, but _evidence_.  There
    have been several bursts of creativity by some memebers of the Boston
    police in the last year, illustrating that there is more than one way
    to cope with lack of evidence.
    
    I do not suggest that this is a pervasive problem.
    
    		- Bruce
    

    The journal "Skeptical Inquirer" had an article a couple of months ago
    investigating the sources of these urban legends.  The article focused
    specifically on witchcraft/ritual maimings & murder legends.  The
    researcher's thesis (supported by a lot of data) was that police
    departments were a definite and real part of the rumor mill.  In fact,
    several characters got rich quick by offering expensive seminars on the
    supposed practices of devil worshipers to police forces.
    
    As others have implied, the endorsement of these rumors by preceived
    "authorities" is what allows the turn of common bull-stuff into legend.

    L.

    Re: .5  The "really sad part about this 'rumor'" is not that it could
    "very well be true in today's society".  The sad part is that vast
    numbers of gullible people so enthusiastically participate in the
    propagation of a preposterous unkillable rumor while real and obvious
    problems in our society beg for attention - problems that require
    effort and bravery and committment, individually and communally. The
    "really sad part" is that these real-life problems, with all their
    complexity, stand no chance against the shallow paranoia and the
    simplistic cartoon-like quality of the blue tattoo legend. 

We just got the blue star message sent around on our system.  I sent
another mail message explaining that it is an urban myth.  I then got
a call from someone who said that her brother had heard on the news last
night that this had happened in Denver this year.  I called (on my personal
non-DEC calling card, of course) the Denver police dept, Narcotics 
division, and spoke with Detective Bernard Montoya.  He said that sure
there are LSD blotters which may look something like this, and yes
sometimes the lab that makes them accidentally makes them too strong and
the LSD can get into the body through the fingers, but that "it doesn't
happen" that someone is passing these out or selling them to elementary
school children.  He said he wouldn't be surprised if teens bought LSD,
but kept saying that distribution to little children "doesn't happen".

I asked him if he would double check with one of his coworkers to see if
they had heard of such a thing, and he checked with his partner, Frank,
who agreed with Detective Montoya that such a thing has not happened in
Denver.

BTW, turns out that Detective Montoya has a brother that works here in CXO.:-)

              Carol

    I guess we all get to eat our words about the urban legend. 
    
    Yesterday's Nashua Telegraph reported that in Londonderry "police 
    have confiscated a sheet of paper with about 100
    images of blue unicorns on it that contain LSD and are concerned about
    the drug being sold to school-age children as rub-on tatoos." Police
    have made an arrest in connection with the LSD confiscated.
    
    "The drugs confiscated were tested at teh State Police laboratory in
    Concord. Each of the tabs contains a very high dosage of LSD."
    

    A similar story was reported in the Clinton Daily Item last week.
    Three people were arrested and the stickers were confiscated.  I don't
    remember what the sticker looked like, but the police also said they
    had confiscated some three years ago that were Disney Characters.
    These latest ones too contained LSD.
    

    Maybe this is a case of the "legend" causing the actual event to occur. 
    Maybe somebody got the idea to do this from reading about it in an
    urbal legend book.
    
    In any case, it seems these stickers _do_ exist.

If you read .18, you will see that I never denied that blotter acid exists
(that is what this is called).  Nor that some of the blotter acid looks like
cartoon characters, etc.  The question was whether or not it has been sold or
passed out to small children (as opposed to teenagers).  According to the
detective in Denver that I quoted, it doesn't happen. 

From what you have said was in the newspaper article, it still is not
definate that these were being sold or offered to children, only that
they are looking into it.  This is no surprise, since these fliers have
been making a lot of people very scared that this would happen.  I would be 
very interested in knowing about it if they do determine that children 
were given/buying these.

         Carol

    Having been one of the loudest debunkers in the past, I read the
    article of the Londonderry arrest with interest.  The article
    did mention having distributed warnings that were obviously the
    infamous "blue star" legend.
    
    The Nashua Telegraph printed a picture of a sheet, that contained
    figures of unicorns.  What puzzles me is that the notion that these
    are skin transfer tattoos, and not "blotter acid", did not appear
    to be substantiated.  I suspect the reporting was mixing fact with
    legend.  It will be interesting to see what comes of this.
    
    				Steve

Connect, the monthly newspaper for Digital people in the UK, has a headline 
story entitled "Hoax memo sparks nationwide drugs alert".

The article is about the LSD impregnated transfers memo discussed here. The 
memo got outside the company and apparently became widely distributed.

The source of the memo was quoted in the article, and I quote, "The 
offending memo, which had first appeared on the UK network as an item in a 
parenting conference, was soon traced back across the Atlantic."

There isn't a "parenting" conference in the UK, this is the only one I know 
of on the net. I moderate the only UK conference they could have meant 
(WPG_UK) and it wasn't posted there. I therefore rang the source of the 
quote, Karen Meeks (Press Office Manager) to query her source. She was not 
able to give me the information.

So it seems one bit of misinformation leads to another...

Dave :-(

It could well have been USENET net.kids.  They have even more trouble with 
urban legends than we do (given the total absence of anything resembling
moderation on USENET).

I'm a new noter, and thought I'd give my two cent's worth ...

In 1980 when I was working as a police cadet for the Huntington Beach, CA police
department, one of the narcotics officers showed me a sheet of stamps (one of
the Disney characters, don't remember which), and he told me each stamp had a
drop of acid on it, and that the user put it on his tongue to absorb it. 

It was a long time ago, but I don't remember him specifically saying they were
being distributed to children, just that it was a new way of disguising and 
distributing the drugs.

So in my mind they _do_ exist, (at least they did ten years ago!), and we should
just be 'aware' of this type of drug 'disguising.'

Susan_who_hopes_this_note_gets_sent_correctly...

    But a blotter you put on your tongue is NOT the same thing as a
    tatoo transfer.  
    
    A tatoo transfer is a plastic thing sort of like a window decal 
    that lets you decorate your body -- with kids it's usually the
    cheek or the back of a hand -- as if you were a hell's angel, and
    then peel it off after you've had enough of feeling tough.  You
    can buy them in most toy stores and a lot of other places. 
    
    Tatoo transfers are something kids use and if the hallucinogen
    really was embedded in one of them to be absorbed through the
    skin, it would be easy for a child to accidentally absorb the
    drug, and since the doses are designed for adults, get an
    overdose.  They would be really dangerous even if the intent
    weren't to distribute them to children.  
    
    If they don't stick to your skin and have to be placed on your
    tongue to get any effect, they're much less dangerous.  I'd want
    my kid to know about them and know not to play with them, the same
    way he knows not to play with blasting caps left from a
    construction project, but it's not worth mobilizing the school
    for. 
    
    --bonnie