DEA-Sponsored Museum Exhibit Offers A Look At Artifacts, Along With An Anti-Drug Message

Our daily roundup of Texas headlines.

By Becky FogelSeptember 25, 2017 4:50 pm

The Standard’s news roundup gives you a quick hit of interesting, sometimes irreverent, and breaking news stories from all over the state.

A traveling exhibit from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration made its debut at the Texas Museum of Science and Technology in Central Texas. It’s called “Drugs: Costs and Consequences.”

The Texas Standard’s Alexandra Hart went to Cedar Park, north of Austin, to check out the exhibit:

The exhibit takes a look at the health, societal and environmental costs of the manufacture and use of illegal substances. Visitors can see a recreated South American cocaine processing camp, and an Afghan heroin operation.

But it also looks at drug effects closer to home, says Special Agent Wendell Campbell, the Public information officer for the DEA’s Houston division.

“Actually some exhibits where we show like what some homes that we go into really look like when the parents are abusing drugs and the lifestyle that they live,” Campbell says.

The showcase has worked its way around the U.S. But here in Cedar Park, it’s been customized to highlight drug cases specific to the state.

Houston Division Special Agent In Charge Will Glaspy helped curate the local cases shown here.

“What we’ve got in the local stories section of the exhibit, cases that were worked from several of our offices in the Houston division so offices in south and central Texas,” Glaspy says.

While it’s a sobering look at the ills of substance abuse, Campbell says there’s an optimistic message as well.

“We have a whole section dedicated to helping people move beyond the abuse of drugs to some type of recovery and a healthy lifestyle, that’s what we really want them to walk away with and a new sense of hope,” he says.

The exhibit will be on display through next summer.




Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban defended the right of football players and professional athletes in general to kneel during the national anthem, as a form of protest. Cuban was responding to President Donald Trump’s call for NFL teams to fire players that do this.

Cuban told NBC’s Meet the Press that now that Trump has criticized players, he has to be ready for the same in return.

“They have every right for the same reasons to be able to say whatever’s on their mind. Now we’ll see if he’s going to be able to take it,” Cuban said.

The demonstrations during the anthem started last season with then-San Francisco Quarterback Colin Kaepernick who was protesting police treatment of black people and social injustice.




The nation’s first professional Muslim sorority has launched its second chapter, now at the University of Texas at Austin.

KUT News reporter Nadia Hamdan shares more about UT-Austin’s Mu Delta Alpha which wrapped its first rush week on campus a few days ago.

Initially called Muslimas for Change, the sorority was first established at the University of Texas at Dallas in the fall of 2016. It’s founder says the sorority will have similar aspects of traditional greek life, such as sister and friendship.  But it’s main goal is to empower Muslim women to be leaders while sticking to their Islamic values. They plan to host activities such as career workshops and Quran study – as well as social events.