25 years ago: Suspicous postcards on teen drug use alarm local parents

From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for Feb. 6, 1990:

Law enforcement officials were warning local residents to beware of postcards coming from a company that claimed to have knowledge of the recipients’ children using illegal drugs. Police and sheriff’s officials and the state attorney general’s office reported this morning that they had received several calls from people, including some in the Lawrence area, who had received the postcards and were questioning their validity. The cards were mailed from a company in Houston called the National Drug Awareness and Detection Agency and read in part, “We have been informed that your children may be using ILLEGAL DRUGS … Please call us IMMEDIATLY (sic).” When recipients called the Houston telephone number on the card, they were given a lengthy presentation about the danger of drugs and their probable use by at least some of the caller’s “loved ones.” Callers were then urged to purchase a drug test (costing $99.95) which the company claimed could detect drug use by measuring the pupil of a person’s eye. Chris Mulvenon, Lawrence police spokesman, said today that he didn’t know if the postcards were legal, but that he found them, and the “pupilometer” the company promoted, to be “highly questionable.”