The propaganda is served up with nary a chuckle at this heavy-handed museum brought to you by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). Exhibits cover the last century-and-a-half of drug use, from the opium parlors of the 19th century, to 1920s cocaine-dispensing apothecaries, onto the trippy days of the 1960s, the crack epidemic of the 1980s, and more recent days of crystal-meth labs and the powder drugs favored by the 24-hour party people of today.
There are scary photos of gunned-down Latin American drug lords and coloring books for small children describing why drugs are bad. Don't miss the videos, which feature anachronistic gems like Nancy Reagan's 'Just Say No [to drugs]' campaign. There's little nuance here, and no discussion of America's changing laws and attitudes toward cannabis. Here the War on Drugs marches ever onward, even if the rest of the country (DC included, which voted to legalize marijuana in 2014) sees things in less black-and-white terms.
