The Barbara Case Preventive Drug Education Program

“Our youth are being bombarded with drug-oriented songs, played and sung by drug-using rock and roll groups. The adult population has not been aware of these songs because the majority do not frequent places where this kind of music is performed, and because the decibel range of the music runs too high for most adult auditory capacity.”

Orinda, CA: Educational Consulting Service, 1971. 4to. Plastic comb-bound. 223pp.;  glossary, bibliography, & [7]pp. supplement at rear. Near fine, with light toning and edgewear to covers; former owner’s name and light scattered foxing to title page.

An educational sourcebook written in “layman’s language” and dealing with “any and all drugs, their effects, value, legality aspects, and medical use.” Prepared by Case under the auspices of the Diocese of Oakland’s preventive drug education program, and written with the stated intention of reducing “the number of drug abusers in the schools.” The text is permeated with typographical and factual errors (Sandoz, for instance, the Swiss pharmaceutical company for which Albert Hoffman was working when he discovered LSD, becomes “Sondiz”), as well as the expected dose of alarmist editorializing (cf. the quotation above, taken from the chapter titled “Drug-Oriented Popular Songs,” which contains transcriptions of lyrics by Jefferson Airplane and Donovan). That said, the guide represents an interesting independent attempt to collate available information about drugs and their place in American society at the end of the 1960s. Unrecorded in OCLC.