“Alas, my childhood also marked the final years of amateur chemistry as a socially acceptable pursuit.”
A modern chemistry set is baking soda, citric acid and pH strips. Iodine got hard to buy because of meth. The CPSC raided chemical sellers over fireworks and YouTube chemistry channels disappeared. The War on Drugs and the War on Terror didn’t stop many cooks or bombers. They did stop a lot of curious kids from becoming chemists.