All photos by Rusty Blazenhoff and Ken Dashner
 
Laughing Squid posted these incredible photos of a 1960s “Narcotics & Dangerous Drugs Identification Kit.” Apparently the kit, manufactured by Winston Products for Education, was used in schools to teach kids about the dangers of drugs. In all honesty though, this kit showcases drugs a little like a candy store. It also reminds me strongly of the work of visionary painter Paul Laffoley. It’s a work of art!

 

 

 

 
(via Laughing Squid)

Gah! Am I showing my age by saying that I remember policemen coming to my school to teach us about drugs by using these? These pictures are making me more nostalgic that anything else.

Anyone else wish they could just peel some of this stuff off of the page?

This brings back a crazy memory.  It was 1970 and my friend and I were seniors in high school.  We had been delayed from leaving school (detention of course) and were walking through the halls near the science rooms and teachers office.  We smell this wonderful smell of pot drifting through the halls.  We, of course, follow it like two drifting cartoon characters.  We walk through the teachers door to find 3 of the science teachers breathing in the incense of the pot smell-a-like.  We of course gave them a hard time about smoking pot.  Then they accused us of being degenerates for knowing what it smelled like in the first place.  Yet more detention.  I’m amazed I ever made it out of high school.

“Ends twisted”? You could use this same presentation for medical marijuana patients in CA.

One criticism: It doesn’t say which part of the arm to tie off on…some current reasonable pricing would be good too.

I remember the local cops lecturing my 6th grade class with those displays, too. What this makes me most nostalgic about them, though, is that my 52-year-old body is no longer resilient enough to indulge in every one of those (“HEY! Where’s the blow!? No blow? WTF is wrong with them!!!”), whenever I want to. Sure, a wee bit of cannabis once in a while, and psilos when I can find them, opiates when a friend is feeling generous with their prescription, etc., but I really miss the enjoyment I got with every-damned-thing on the display. Never got busted for all the stuff I used to do, so I don’t have that sort of harsh reality clouding my otherwise-great memories.

BOMBER!

I’ve always wondered what cough syrup looks like, now I know. This makes me want to read “Go Ask Alice” again and get scared straight once and for all!

Had to look up “asthmador”. Sometimes, the old days were kind of better. A little more freewheeling in any case.

And, I kid you not, my captcha is high59.

Bomber, indeed! man i gotta try that one. thanks, The Man, for teaching me about all this stuff in the first place.

did ANYONE actually learn about these things in “the streets”? all i remember is 5th grade D.A.R.E. program and smoking my first bit of weed in 6th grade. IMAGINE THAT.

I used to love reading drug scare books in elementary school.  They just made drugs seems so exciting, and the creativity displayed by drug users seemed ingenious.  I recall a pictorial on how some kids smoked hash- shaving bits off the chunk, then making a smoking device out of tin foil and a glsss of water to cool the smoke.

Though these books kind of backfired at the time, I find recreational drugs to be a drag.

I gotta ask: What are they calling the “roach” along with the matchbook caption in the heroin section?Nevaherduvit.

what the hell do they mean by “manicured marijuana?” not still on the plant? cause there are some enormous seeds sitting there, just waiting to fuck up your joint or explode out of the bowl into your delayed-reaction-times eyeball. clean your weed better The Man!

Dude.  That ‘manicured’ MJ looks like total shwag. 

That’s a lot of liquid LSD. 

Were these drug displays filled with props or the real deal?  I remember a cop bringing one of these in elementary school also.

In the late sixties i tried most of the things on the list at least once, except for the heroin, and morphine, but i mostly took LSD and pot,Back in those days it seemed like i should try everything, it wasn’t like there was just LSD and pot over here and the other drugs over there, the drugs were around and it all got mixed in and up, but the kids i hung out with were not hard core drug addicts, but we knew them and sometimes we were around the hard core crowd.I got pills from a girl that got them from her shrink dad, she called them “mind openers”, but they were some kind of powerful speed.And a lot of kids were taking reds.Anyway, i wrote a novel about those years 67 68, that chronicles a series of LSD trips, with the other drug stuff that was mixed in, the novel is written in a poetic style, but it really gets down to the nitty gritty, of the world of drugs and how it permeated the consciousness of the times, the music, and the psychedelic wave.Burroughs was a big influence on me, as were the surrealists.I keep mentioning my novel on DM
because i think that maybe someday somebody on here will check it out, it really describes what it was like for one teenager, but in order to get back into the mind that was going through that, i had to recreate it all from the inside out, not just from the outside.I did not learn how to write in a collage class, i learned it from a crazy surfer that was into beat and surrealist writing and poetry, and i learned it the long hard slow way, by meeting real poets. Notice that nobody makes movies about the late sixties, especially to show LSD in a positive light, or at least real light.Hollywood tried it in The Trip in 67 and then Fear and Loathing was pretty wild, but to make a movie about the late sixties, about teenagers on LSD seriously? I see this outta sight outta mind blank out about this subject as a commentary on just how much they want to sweep the late 60’s under the carpet, besides the music is still trying to be psychedelic, i think there was a bubble there in around 67’ 68’ 69’ that existed on some other plane, in so far as the magic of the drug scenes, it was all experimental, and new, but there was that hard core there to insulate it, isolate, and finally pop it.So there it is the psychedelics are on that board with the other drugs, and somehow the addiction is mixed with mind bending(expansion).I just wanted to capture the innocent need to explore mind altering substances in the late 60’s.But also since Burroughs was so wise to the bummers, he made me want to write about it.
...Gone Hallucinogen Freeway,on amazon

Best thread ever!

I remember this too.  right down to the little string used for a tourniquet.

good gracious that brings back memories.

Hey All, Love all the comments on this. This is my personal Drugs ID Kit and it was so much fun to show it to the world through the wonderful blog, Laughing Squid.

To answer the question if the items are real: um, no.

About the roach with the matchbook: Ya, dunno. Things have shifted in the case but there doesn’t seem to be anything else in that pocket.

In the heroin outfit: That rusty blade is a bit foreboding, no? Yikes.

I was particularly amused by the containers of liquid. Like…would you ever have a jar of gasoline or paint thinner to huff like that? Would a dealer hand you some cough syrup in a dark alley? And why two cough syrups?

Curious to note: No cocaine.

Notice how the cigarette is in the marijuana section as if it’s just there to compare what a marijuana cigarette vs. a real one. And the only other mention of tobacco is what looks to be pipe tobacco. As I said in the original post, I can’t prove it’s linked to Winston cigarettes but it wouldn’t surprise me.

I have a lot of odd things but this is definitely one of my favorites. I hope to share more in the future via Laughing Squid. Thanks for all your comments…it’s fun to read them. And thanks to Dangerous Minds for the re-post.

Rusty.

oh, i never huffed gasoline, or paint thinner, i tried airplane glue a few times, but that was before i did anything else.I remember hearing about kids that were real glue heads, and i think it scared me, so my glue experiment ended after a few tries.There was no cocaine around in the late 60’s that i knew of.

I have a complete kit from the 60’s for sale! anyone interested hit me up at tm93230@yahoo.com