New Look Museum

PLease visit the Museum to see our new look. Cleaner, crisper, less Emo.
Let us know your thoughts!!

New Exhibits

The Museum is delighted to present two new exhibits. The first was generously donated to the Museum by a group of beneficiaries, a print from 1946 of a Picasso painting entitled 'Woman Drinking Absinthe'. The second exhibit is an opium jar. This exhibit features a jade lid with cork insert upon which is fixed a bone spoon for partaking opium as a snuff. The Museum has tested remnants within the jar using modern scientific methods and have evidenced the existence of morphine.
Please visit the exhibits through teh exhibits section of the site www.museumofdrugs.com/exhibits

Harper's Weekly

The eagerly awaited Harper's Weekly article recounting the experiences of a reporter in a Hashish House in New York has been uploaded to the exhibits section of the Museum Website. The unlikely escapade reveals the interior of one of the city's secretive haunts, where the wealthy and bohemian set imbibe the intoxicating psychoactive properties of the much demonized cannabis sativa, invisible to the thoroughfare of regular traffic that pounds the streets outside.
The article reflects the stylization of the time, delivering to its readership the very image already formed in its imagination of the experiences one might encounter in entering such a premises, the lush carpets and surrounds, the orientalized mysticism, the subconscious sense of foreboding that warns the reader that this is a place where civilization has given way to vice.
The author's description of the effects of the drug are more akin to a journalistic flight of fantasy, than the nature of the substances he has partaken, unless he has become an early proponent of ketamine use.
As with so many of the articles exhibited in the Museum, the underlying message is that drugs are synonymous with deviant sexuality and immigration and hence a threat to the moral fiber of the nation.

New exhibit

New exhibit from Harpers Weekly 19th Century coming soon. The article focuses on a reporters expose of a hashish house in New York. Check out the exhibits section this coming weekend!

Forgotten Voices

Do you know anyone who used drugs pre-1971? Perhaps you know someone involved in enforcement pre 1971? 

Ask them to add their comments to the Forgotten Voices section of the website www.museumofdrugs.com - an innovative way of collating hidden histories. 

Keep history alive 

Music Hall

Visit the Music Hall to view music and artists associated with substance use. Included in the Music Hall are works by the Velvet Underground, Jefferson Airplane and Billie Holiday. If you would like to make recommendations for artists that you would like to see on the Museum, please contact the Curator

Visit the Movies

Follow the 'Picture House' link from the home page to visit early representation of drug use in the movies. 

If you would like to contribute film clippings, or commentary please e-mail the Curator, via the website links.