Drug shadow box

This drug and drug paraphernalia "shadow box" seems like it might have hung on a police station wall for at-a-glance identification purposes. Of course, as the text says, "Positive identification of any drug requires laboratory analysis." Drugs shadow box

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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spriggan

Totally had these in every health/science classroom in middle/high school. We use to stare at them and make fun of all the weird unknown (at least for a few more years til college) drugs. And this was a quiet rural school system so I think these were pretty common.
subhan

#18 – nitrous was a HUGE drug on the Dead tour in the late 80s & early 90s. It was known as hippie crack. Easy to find the vans with the tanks – just follow the trail of people with giant balloons and grungy frat boys face-planted in the gravel.
Of course, only losers got it out of whippit canisters like that one in the display.
- mausium
  
  “#18 – nitrous was a HUGE drug on the Dead tour in the late 80s & early 90s. It was known as hippie crack.”
  
  http://www.seattleweekly.com/2010-07-07/news/the-gas-peddle-the-nitrous-mafia-spreads-widespread-panic-at-summer-music-festivals/
  
  It’s still around.
irksome

What’s a “film canister”?
- Anonymous
  
  HAHA I’ve used film canisters for years for my stash… I’m now down to my LAST ONE! What do I do?!?!?
- Anonymous
  
  my father was a pothead, and I was probably about 7 years old before I ever saw a roll of 35mm film come out of one of those canisters…prior to that they had always had weed in them.
  
  this looks like it was made 20 years ago… prior to the black tar heroin boom, the meth boom, and who gives a crap about Nitrous Oxide?
dculberson

Shoot! A fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff.
Crubellier

Â¨ShermieÂ¨? Really?
Pavlo

Funny enough most of them don’t even look real drugs. Weed looks like some bag of twigs, and peyote button reminds me more of a old chewing gum.
- osmo
  
  That lump of hasch looks sort of “off” too…
- Boba Fett Diop
  
  “No Sarge, it doesn’t seem to be marijuana. It’s just a bunch of what look to be little sticky flower buds. I guess we’ll have to cut ‘em loose.”
Anonymous

Back when I was in Jr. High, my friends stole the marijuana from one of these boxes and smoked it. I think it may have been fake.
Boba Fett Diop

Not pictured: “Giant Cone Blunt,” “Cross-shaped Novelty Joint,” “Elaborate Water Pipe With Multiple Cooling Chambers And Jackson Pollock Motif,” and “Vaporizer.”

Also, that is some schwaggy looking weed. They should really have a conversation with their supplier.
squid flavored mouthwash

I remember seeing this when I was kid in grade school in the ’70′s.
There was an Officer Friendly who would come to the school and talk to us about not doing drugs, and not being bad in general.
He brought this, so we would know what to look for if our friends or anyone else had this stuff. I guess we were supposed to then turn them in, or something…..
Captdrastic

I remember the juvie cop coming to my elementary school in about 1982 with one of these. We also watched a video about what rock and/or roll songs were influenced by or about drugs. Ah, propaganda.
John Napsterista

That looks just like the science fair projects the hesher chicks at my junior high school used to come up with it.
JoshP

correction it’s Hunter S.’s Existential First Aid Kit. Lolmg.
Alvis

Interesting:

No cocaine/heroin/opium/meth. Is there another half to this display?

MDMA dates this to late 80s or more recent. Also, none of those pills look anything like your typical MDMA dose.
- rebdav
  
  Looks like what I saw at a early 1980′s officer friendly says turn in your friends and parents to help them or they will die. I remember this being a folding thing with two shadowboxes, I suppose that is where the hard drugs were. I asked the 8th grade junior anti-drug officers too many questions so they told me I had to act like I was on drugs then kicked me out of the class for following instructions.
lasttide

This must be either super old or not from the US. How often can cops possibly come across hash oil or peyote? Although the inclusion of MDMA as a section makes me think 80′s at the earliest.
Smash Martian

“In case of existential emergency, break glass”
- sally599
  
  I was thinking the same thing!
- redesigned
  
  my thoughts exactly, but beat me to it! :-)
Donald Petersen

Well, I learned something, at least. I wasn’t aware of the difference between a “joint” and a “blunt.”

Under which subset should one file a “spliff”?
- akbar56
  
  Joint-Cannabis rolled into regular rolling papers
  Spliff-Cannabis and tobacco rolled into regular rolling papers
  Blunt-Cannabis rolled in a cigar wrapper
  - Donald Petersen
    
    Thanks, guys! It’s not like I’m not surrounded by RL people who could have clarified these distinctions for me (e.g. father-in-law, bassist, assistant, boss, and, uh, wife) but it never occurred to me to ask before.
    
    And somehow I knew the answers would be found here, politely offered, and thoroughly researched. And you didn’t even call me an ignorant square!
    
    You Boingers rock.
- Anonymous
  
  A spliff could be either, but is generally in the form of a joint. A spliff just refers to the marijuana having tobacco mixed in.
sitar

film canister is to drugs what casio watch is to terrorists
doingdoing

Whoever rolled that blunt out of THAT weed is a master!…No ‘shrooms? but you found PEYOTE? PCP? FILM CANISTERS? Pre-glass pipes but post blunt hysteria, I would date it around ’93 (or any greyhound stations lost and found.)
OtiGoji

Hey, that’s my hash oil, man! I lost that exact same vial back in nineteen and seventy-one, or thereabouts… and it looks like you pinched it, man, where’s the rest of it?
Anonymous

That marijuana looks horrible. All brown and full of stems and shake. Just say no to bad weed, man.
mausium

I recall this from late 80s early 90s DARE use, some officer brought one in for us to observe.
qualiagirl

My boyfriend back in ’83 kept a carefully labeled binder just like this one. After a particularly dry summer, however, the book was empty.
Anonymous

Similar one here:

http://www.collectorsweekly.com/stories/19669-drug-diagram-i-cannot-find-anything-ab?in=unsolved-mysteries
jphilby

“Positive identification of any drug requires laboratory analysis.”

Or a taste.
Anonymous

I thought this was Hunter Thompson’s first aid kit.
Modusoperandi

You’d think that cops would have access to better quality samples…
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Well, they’re not going to put out the good stuff for company.
  - Modusoperandi
    
    Antinous / Moderator “Well, they’re not going to put out the good stuff for company.”
    My tax dollars pay their wages!
Anonymous

I would be sooooooooo pissed if I bought a bag of weed and it looked like that lol.
Anonymous

In 6th grade the D.A.R.E (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) police officer brought one of these into class to show us. They also brought a bunch of scary pictures of what happened to people that did these drugs.

Incidentally this kit helped me identify weed when I first came across it via my parents stash. It’s also where I learned the sort of papers I needed to try and smoke it.

The worst thing about the D.A.R.E classes is that at the end of the program they make a bunch of 6th graders hereby certify and swear that they will never ever experiment with or do drugs in their lifetime. They actually made you sign an official looking certificate saying this in order to pass.
Sam

Positive identification of any drug requires laboratory analysis, unless suspect is Black or Hispanic, in which case drug is whatever is most convenient for it to be.

Seriously though, my gf works at a drug testing lab that serves the criminal justice community (generally people currently in prison or on parole), and if the test comes back confirming their suspicion, they jump on it and use it in court (even if it is just a preliminary screen that isn’t supposed to be used in court), and if it comes back denying their suspicion they tell the individual that it came back positive in order to trick them into confessing. The actual scientific results are of very little interest to the law enforcement – they are just interested in the quickest way to justify what they intended to do all along.