Mother is an alcoholic, older sister is a drug addict. What will happen to a girl that now plays with a doll?

Jacob Sullum | November 23, 2005

Mike Alissi pointed me to this story (complete with photos!) about a wax figure show in Moscow that "highlights graphic dangers of drugs." The exhibit's combination of didacticism with morbid appeal is reminiscent of an old-fashioned freak show: "Created to promote a healthy way of life by showing what drugs can do to a human being, it creates a strong impression on visitors. The organizers even have liquid ammonia on hand to resuscitate anyone who faints at the sight of the disfigured faces of drug addicts or the embryo of an addict's baby in formalin." And if anyone dies of fright, the organizers will pay for the coffin!

Presumably the DEA, which has tried its hand at this sort of thing, is already arranging an American tour.

Comments

|11.23.05 @ 11:54AM|#

Ugh, that was pretty gross.

|11.23.05 @ 11:57AM|#

Did you see the one of Freddie Mercury? What the fuck?!?!? He died of AIDS, for God's sake! More pathetic drug war disinformation.

|11.23.05 @ 12:00PM|#

Wax figures are terrifying in and of themselves, regardless of the message.

Rich Ard|11.23.05 @ 12:00PM|#

That's not much of a "proper" joint, if you ask me.

|11.23.05 @ 12:15PM|#

And if anyone dies of fright, the organizers will pay for the coffin!

Don't forget EMERGO!

|11.23.05 @ 12:23PM|#

I wish it would tour the US just so I could visit in person. It would make a great October double-bill with a Christian "hell house" designed to scare folks.

Did the opium smokers make anyone else think of Dodgeball?

|11.23.05 @ 12:28PM|#

It's a shame these individuals threw away their chance to live a comfortable life at Madame Tussauds or the Hollywood Wax Museum in Branson, Missouri. Instead they're wasting their poor, waxen lives on the streets of Moscow, headed towards prison or prostituting themselves in a candle shop.

|11.23.05 @ 12:36PM|#

RandyAyn: Right -- unless the Russian drug authorities are in HIV/AIDS denial and the drugs they refer to are protease inhibitors.

Or maybe in Russia they still haven't figured out that Mercury was gay. Seems to be a common self-deception among a certain segment of their fans.

I really am wondering now how this misrepresentation of the facts occurred. Are the exhibit's creators and the "Federal Service for Drug Control" deliberately lying to the public or are they themselves willfully ignorant of the truth?

|11.23.05 @ 12:47PM|#

A mirror reflection explains that a drug dealer is Death itself, while a youth buying drugs faces forthcoming ageing

Yes, because if you stay drug-free you'll never get a wrinkle in your life. I suspect that Reagan's drugless existence also explains how his hair stayed so shiny-black well into his eighties.

Drug addiction threatens youths from all levels of society

How beautifully egalitarian. Russia could use more of that.

A midwife with a newborn baby, whose mother is a drug addict

So you're saying if I use drugs and then get pregnant, my baby will be born looking all red and squalling and bald and covered with clots of bloody gunk? Eeeeeeeew. Good thing I'm not having kids.

|11.23.05 @ 12:48PM|#

Freddie Mercury was GAY?!

Well, there goes all my Queen albums. At least I still have my Pet Shop Boys and Erasure CDs.

|11.23.05 @ 12:53PM|#

I might add that the depictions are pretty accurate. I myself tend to move like a wax dummy after a nice, fat J. And the same facial expression.

|11.23.05 @ 12:55PM|#

It reminded me of a 19th century french cartoon boingboing had yesterday.
Well, to be honest, the wax story is at least possible.

|11.23.05 @ 1:04PM|#

"Sweet Cousin Cocaine, lay your cool cool hand on my head
Ah, come on, Sister Morphine, you better make up my bed
'Cause you know and I know in the morning I'll be dead
Yeah, and you can sit around, yeah and you can watch all the
Clean white sheets stained red."

I especially like the huffer with snot all over his face.

|11.23.05 @ 1:04PM|#

Mr. Nice Guy, MY facial expressions tend to be a tad more ecstatic when I regulate interstate commerce. Smile! My guess is that the girl in the picture got burned buying some weak shit. Which is understandable--70 years of Communism totally trashed the country's ability to produce things that could compete in an open, capitalist market.

Larry A|11.23.05 @ 1:11PM|#

They left out a couple of dioramas.

• People rotting in jail because they got caught with the wrong stuff. (Or at least what the government assumes is the wrong stuff. Or selling something the government labels as the wrong stuff to the wrong people.)
• People who want treatment for addiction, but can't afford to bust themselves.
• People dead of gang violence fueled by the war on drugs.
• People screaming in constant pain because physicians are afraid to write the prescriptions they need.
• People barfing up their cancer meds because letting them smoke a joint would "send the wrong message."
• Jacob Sullum in line at the pharmacy counter.

|11.23.05 @ 1:22PM|#

In light of what Larry said, I think/hope the pain-med thing might be the wedge issue that brings this drug-war idiocy to a halt. I figure, as a member of the generation following the Baby Boomers, surely the self-absorbed Boomers will use their political clout to wipe out any issues which bother them, before I'm old enough to worry about it. Which always annoyed me when it came to old-folk entitlements, but in this one case it might be helpful.

|11.23.05 @ 1:31PM|#

Jennifer:

Boomers are some of the biggest fucking hypocrits ever. They had their fun during the 60s, and now either enthusiastically back the drug war, or turn a blind eye towards it.

I understand your point about pain management prohibition, and how the Boomers might backlash against it. But I can see it going too much the other way, where Boomers will demand free medications at the public's expense. It's already happening.

And what will be left for us? Something between Jack and Shit.

|11.23.05 @ 1:36PM|#

A wax museum? Most cities I've lived in have enough real live addicts to not need a museum for people to see the effects.

Or why don't they just have them watch a movie. I have a feeling watching Requiem for a Dream would be far more effective. Or read Junkie.

|11.23.05 @ 1:52PM|#

"...or the embryo of an addict's baby in formalin."

Oh my god, it's grotesque! Oh, and there's something in a jar.

|11.23.05 @ 1:57PM|#

But I can see it going too much the other way, where Boomers will demand free medications at the public's expense. It's already happening.

Honestly, Mr. Nice Guy (and perhaps this is just my inherent evil leftiness poking through), I'd rather pay taxes to pay for other folks' drugs than be put in jail for my own. So if I had to choose, I say better a country with high tax rates to cover free medications, than a country with high tax rates to pay for all the drug users in prison. (And the sad thing is, I don't think that statement was a false dichotomy; that's pretty much what our choices boil down to.)

|11.23.05 @ 2:07PM|#

Does anyone else find the idea of a retired boomer with too much free time and an AARP membership card frightening?

|11.23.05 @ 2:17PM|#

I especially like the huffer with snot all over his face.

When did "huffer" get this meaning? I never heard of it until recently.

|11.23.05 @ 2:20PM|#

When I was planning our Ney York get-together, I got an email from a poster whose last name really was "Huffer." Naturally I commented on it at the time. Is that you, Huff-dude?

|11.23.05 @ 2:24PM|#

mediageek:

Obviously, I'm horrified by it. The Boomers are going to push a massive retiree entitlement system that will only last long enough for them.

By the time they're gone, everyone is going to hate the elderly, resulting in a backlash. Just in time for when the Xers retire.

I have a lot of sympathy for the Ys and Zs, because they are dealing with much more pressure and competition then we did. But I honestly think that Gen X will be the one of the most shit-on generations ever.

|11.23.05 @ 3:06PM|#

Freddie Mercury was GAY?!

Well, there goes all my Queen albums. At least I still have my Pet Shop Boys and Erasure CDs.

Wednesday Fun Comment...

Rich Ard|11.23.05 @ 3:10PM|#

At least I still have my Pet Shop Boys and Erasure CDs.

You don't really have those, right?

(go west...)

|11.23.05 @ 3:23PM|#

Rich Ard:

Actually, I had all that stuff on cassett tapes..that I played on my Walkman..20 years ago..

(another tooth falls out)

|11.23.05 @ 4:07PM|#

"Obviously, I'm horrified by it. The Boomers are going to push a massive retiree entitlement system that will only last long enough for them."

I recently read a piece of half-hearted underground lit that touched on a (roughly three-paragraph long) subplot in which this happened. And then the younger generations were so pissed by it that they started bumping off old people.


Incidentally, with regard to the Freddie Mercury thing, I've also heard a rumor that Geddy Lee of RUSH is gay.

|11.23.05 @ 5:17PM|#

I've also heard a rumor that Geddy Lee of RUSH is gay.

C'mon now! That's so unbelievable! Next thing ya know someone's going to tell me that Rob Halford from Judas Priest is gay.

|11.23.05 @ 6:32PM|#

I like broken English of article. Eet have charming sound like "moose and squirrel".

|11.23.05 @ 8:43PM|#

Apropos of Jennifer's comments, did anyone read this in the NYT Today?

Drug Costs Run Free Under New York Medicaid:

"New York spent $74 million last year, far more than any other state, on Nexium, the "new Purple Pill" for heartburn. The drug is virtually identical to Prilosec, available at one-sixth the cost over the counter, and so at least 20 state Medicaid programs and many private health insurance companies severely restrict its use. Only now, two years after other states began imposing limits on Nexium, has New York moved to restrict it.

And those amounts are pocket change compared with the $348 million or more that New York could have saved if it were as aggressive as a state like Michigan in setting the prices it pays pharmacies for the drugs they dispense. New York frequently pays many times more for drugs than Medicaid programs in other states.

For years, New York Medicaid, the state's health care program for the poor, has been an open-air bazaar for drug companies and their wares. Prescriptions that are severely restricted in many states are often dispensed freely here, and at higher prices, costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

As a result, the state program spends more on drugs for each Medicaid recipient than any other state but West Virginia, according to federal statistics. While other states have tried to fight soaring drug costs, New York lacks even the most basic controls that dozens of other states and private health insurers have used.

"They call it the gold card," said William Scheer, president of the New York City Pharmacists Society and a pharmacy owner, referring to the state health care program. "You get anything you want with it."

|11.23.05 @ 10:58PM|#

Not a single California Cheeseburger? For shame.

|11.24.05 @ 12:05AM|#

"And those amounts are pocket change compared with the $348 million or more that New York could have saved if it were as aggressive as a state like Michigan in setting the prices it pays pharmacies for the drugs they dispense. New York frequently pays many times more for drugs than Medicaid programs in other states."

One scary result of government run drug programs is the eventual price controls. Combined with the regulations and law suites (some law suites are legitimate, but others boil down to a lawyer going after deep pockets.), this puts a toll on drug companies. I read in an NYTimes article a few weeks ago that drug companies are laying off workers. Fewer biologists working on cures means fewer discoveries in a given year. People with diseases that aren't treatable yet are stuck.

raymond|11.24.05 @ 1:27AM|#

Ugh, that was pretty gross.

The page has good old USA-capitalist ads on the left. This one caught my eye.

Be sure to click on the link to "photos of bowel movements from this cleanse." (I didn't dare link directly to it here.)

My point? Russians are charmingly amateurish when it comes to "gross".

|11.24.05 @ 6:33AM|#

One scary result of government run drug programs is the eventual price controls. Combined with the regulations and law suites (some law suites are legitimate, but others boil down to a lawyer going after deep pockets.), this puts a toll on drug companies. I read in an NYTimes article a few weeks ago that drug companies are laying off workers. Fewer biologists working on cures means fewer discoveries in a given year. People with diseases that aren't treatable yet are stuck.

Oh really, not because the alternative medicine and herbal supplement industry is growing exponentially annually? Dr. Andrew Weil's books seem to be staying at the top of the NYT Best Seller Book lists for longer periods of times these days. Could it be more people are not buying into what big pharma is trying to sell? Price controls are certainly a negative, but I think there are more underlying reasons at work as well.