Tinfoil Hat

The 1977 award-winning musical “Annie” introduced countless audience members to the term Mickey Finn¹ in the hit song “It’s The Hard-Knock Life” when the children sang “Make her drink a Mickey Finn” in a series of various methods of getting revenge upon the despicable head of the orphanage, Miss Hannigan.²

Mike Wallace in Mickey Mouse History and Other Essays on American Memory referenced The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 3rd edition, for his definition of Mickey Finn:

Mickey Finn n. Slang. An alcoholic beverage that is surreptitiously altered to induce diarrhea or stupefy, render unconscious or otherwise incapacitate the person who drinks it.³

Assailants surreptitiously lace victims’ beverages with the drugs to suppress their memory and eliminate inhibitions, though other delivery systems are also available, including pin pricks and gas. Whether to rob or rape, slipping someone a Mickey is “almost like the perfect crime,” according to prosecutor Dennis Nicewander, “because they don’t have to worry about a witness testifying against them.” ⁴

Disney's wicked witch with poisoned apple

While the origin of the term Mickey Finn is unknown, its history traces back to at least 1832 with “the oldest of the hypnotic (sleep inducing} [sic] depressants, chloral hydrate,” according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Adminstration. “A solution of chloral hydrate and alcohol constituted the infamous ‘knockout drops’ or ‘Mickey Finn.'” ⁵

Sedative hypnotics again made headlines in mid-1990s due to a huge increase of young adults and even children spiking drinks with so-called “date rape drugs” with sexual predators in Delaware found to be wearing t-shirts emblazoned with the chemical formula⁶ for the most popular Mickey Finn at the time, Rohypnol (or Roofies). Emergency legislation was immediately passed in 1996 by the U.S. Congress to raise the penalty for possessing rape drugs from three to 30 years in prison.⁷

Another drug commonly used by predators is gamma-hydroxy butyrate (GHB). In 2007 a popular children’s art supply made in China, Aqua Dots (sold as Bindeez in Australia which had been named toy of the year), was recalled when it was discovered that the beads metabolize into GHB when swallowed.⁸

Sexuality itself can also be altered in a variety of ways through the introduction of hormones or other substances, learning, and more recently genetic engineering.⁹ The proximity effect of prenatal siblings affects gender expression, and a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concluded that “women were 25% less likely to have children if their twin was male,” reported BBC News in 2007.¹⁰ Anecdotal evidence suggests cohabitation to synchronize menstrual cycles among females. Behavioral reinforcement goes a long way in the determination of kinks and fetishes. And chemical castration has even been applied under the auspices of reducing sexual deviancy.¹¹

British news agencies reported in January 2005 of a $7.5 million 1994 U.S. Military project to develop a “Love Bomb” that would make enemy troops sexually attractive to each other. Included were ideas for an “Attack Me” bomb to attract swarms of wasps or rats as well as a long-desired “Who? Me?” bomb that would produce a noxious odor. “A substance to make the skin unbearably sensitive to sunlight was also pondered,” reports BBC News.¹²

“The 1994 plans, from the US air force Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the Sunshine Project, which exposes chemical and biological weapons research,” writes The Telegraph.¹³


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Sources

¹ Kevin Crosby, “Mickey Finn,” SkewsMe.com, at http://www.skewsme.com/mickeyfinn.html (retrieved: 22 October 2008).

² Charles Strouse (music) and Martin Charnin (lyrics), “It’s The Hard-Knock Life,” Annie (Edwin H. Morris & Co. and Charles Strouse, 1977), based on Little Orphan Annie.®

³ Mike Wallace, Mickey Mouse History and Other Essays on American Memory (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), p. 133.

⁴ David Kidwell and Connie Piloto (Knight-Ridder Newspapers), “Dime-sized, $3 pill sends rape rates soaring,” The Seattle Times, 17 Feb 1996, p. A3.

⁵ Chloral Hydrate, U.S. Drug Enforcement Admistration, at http://www.justice.gov/dea/concern/chloral_hydrate.html (retrieved: 26 March 2011).

⁶ Nora Fitzgerald, K. Jack Riley, Ph.D., Tiffany Alston, Cynthia Mamalian, Michelle-Marie Mendez, Abbey Resnick, Bruce Taylor, Ph.D., and Jane Wiseman, “A Report to the Attorney General from the Department of Justice Drug-Facilitated Rape Working Group,” National Criminal Justice Reference Service, PDF at http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/pr/181396.pdf (retrieved: 26 March 2011); mirror at http://www.skewsme.com/img/attorney_general_date_rape.pdf (retrieved: 26 March 2011).

⁷ Across the Nation, The Seattle Times, 27 June 1996, p. A6.

⁸ “Toy contaminated with ‘date rape’ drug pulled,” CNN Cable News Network, 8 November 2007, at http://articles.cnn.com/2007-11-08/us/toy.recall_1_aqua-dots-julie-vallese-spin-master?_s=PM:US (retrieved: 26 March 2011); See also: “Spin Master Recalls Aqua Dots – Children Became Unconscious After Swallowing Beads,” U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, 7 November 2007, at http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml08/08074.html (retrieved: 26 March 2011).

⁹ “Misexpression of the white (w) gene triggers male-male courtship in Drosophila,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, June 1995, at http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/92/12/5525 (retrieved: 22 October 2008).

¹⁰ “Male twins ‘can reduce fertility’,” BBC News, 17 June 2007, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6755747.stm (retrieved: 26 March 2011).

¹¹ “Chemical castration,” Wikipedia.org, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_castration (retrieved: 22 October 2008).

¹² “US military pondered love not war,” BBC News, 15 January 2005, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4174519.stm (retrieved: 26 March 2011).

¹³ Michael Smith (Defence Correspondent), “Pentagon planned love bomb,” The Telegraph, 15 January 2005, at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1481260/Pentagon-planned-love-bomb.html (retrieved: 26 March 2011).