October 18, 1997

Cartoon images
laced with LSD?

ROBERT MOHL
News Editor

	ROANOKE RAPIDS -- A warning to parents is sweeping the area. It's traveling
by fax machine, church bulletin and word of mouth.
	LSD-soaked children's tattoos, covered with colorful blue stars and cartoon
characters are being marketed to children. Worse, some paper tattoos are laced
with deadly strychnine.
	Young lives have already been taken and the problem is spreading faster than
parents and professionals can be warned.
	One other thing.
	"It's a hoax," said Diane Burke, a spokeswoman for Danbury Hospital in
Danbury, Ct.
	"We get at least five calls a week," she said of the flyer, signed by "J.
O'Donnell-Danbury Hospital-Outpatient Chemical Dependency Treatment Services."
"It's been going on more than three years."
	Local police are reluctant to dismiss the idea entirely. LSD is delivered on
paper stamped with images, and it's possible some could be cartoon characters.
But narcotics detectives say they have not seen any.
	"The memo is a truthful statement. It (LSD) comes on stamps," said Detective
Tommy Smith of the Roanoke Rapids Police.
	Smith said he seized stamps with starlike designs soaked with LSD five years
ago.
	"It's a routine way of selling," said Smith. "But I haven't heard any reports
of that in Halifax County."
	A Northampton detective said the problem has not appeared there.
	"I've never seen any in that form, but I'm not saying it's not in the area,"
said Northampton County Sheriff's Detective Sheldon Skinner.
	Skinner said he heard about the stickers several years ago during a seminar.
He remembers it because he made a bust involving 200 hits of LSD shortly after.
They weren't in the shape of cartoon characters though.
	"They were in the form of a BB shot," said Skinner.
	The Drug Enforcement Agency also called the flyer a hoax, and said no
children's tattoos with LSD have ever been reported.
	"Acid comes on paper, I'm sure everybody knows that," said Agent Craig Clapp
of the Halifax County Sheriff's Department Narcotics Division. Clapp added the
paper sometimes comes with starlike designs on it.
	"I haven't seen the blue star yet" or cartoon characters, said Clapp.
	Paper soaked with LSD is a common way of selling the drug, agrees the DEA.
Dealers have sometimes printed cartoon characters on the paper in the past, but
the paper must be eaten to take effect.
	No one has been injured by touching the paper, which the flyer warns is a
danger.
	Local police say they have not detected any increase in LSD trafficking in
the area, or seized paper with blue stars and cartoon characters. But none of
them would rule out the possibility raised by the flyer.
	"We haven't caught anybody with it... yet," said Clapp.