How to identify a drug lab
Just happened across a CD-ROM for sale that provides a couple hundred photos of street drugs. The advertising on that page is pretty silly; it suggests that in addition to using these photos for D.A.R.E. slideshows, police can use them to help identify certain situations. For example, "Law enforcement officers can compare the photographs of illegal drug labs to their situation to determine if a illegal lab is present."
"Hey, Smith! Bring that picture over here and hold it up. [pause.] Yeah. Yeah, look at that bottle in the picture, with the yellow liquid in it—there's a bottle here on the table with yellow stuff in it too. And hey, look, in the picture there's some shelves with, like, some plastic bottles and cans and stuff, just like those shelves over there! Hell, Smith, you know what this is? What we have here is an honest-to-God illegal drug lab! Damn good thing you brought that photograph—never have recognized it otherwise."
Another illegal drug lab busted, with the help of the fine folks at streetdrugs.org. Your tax dollars at work.