This concerns the urban legend (UL) about children's transfers, the kind you wet and stick to your arm, containing doses of the drug LSD or even strychnine. I come across this quite often in the course of my work as an addictions nurse.

 

This UL is world-wide and entirely false. It re-appears quite regularly with warnings purportedly coming from New Scotland Yard or one of the major police forces. Flyers appear which urge parents to photocopy and distribute them to warn others of the dangers.  A copy of such a flyer can be seen on the left.  They are generally known as Blue Star as the original reports concerned transfers bearing that design, however, recent reports have moved with the times and the fashions and many other designs have been included in this hoax. Some of these designs are mentioned in the flyer seen above.

 

There has never been a recorded instance of these transfers or tattoos being laced with any drug and many experts believe that whilst it is theoretically possible that the drug could be administered in this way it is highly unlikely to work. There are of course theories as to why this UL continues and how it started but like most ULs no-one knows for sure. For more information on this subject you might like to visit the Blue Star page .

 

I would be interested in receiving copies of any of the flyers, especially those written in a language other than English.

 

As an update, in 2007 I haven't seen an example of this type of flyer for some time, if anyone knows different please let me know. 

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