The Drug Scene
Original release: Key Records KLP 2601 (2LP box set), 1970
Coordinator: Vick Knight, Los Angeles, CA
Narrator/Moderator: Steve Foster
Participants: dozens of teenage dope addicts
Comments: Surprising
about-face from the John Birchers at Key Records, who after the patethically
wrongheaded "Instant Insanity Drugs" went back into the PTA
think-tank and came up with a more reasonable and realistic approach to the
"drug menace". The young narrator refrains from preaching and is
basically curious and balanced in his interviews with burnt out teenagers in
various facilites and rehab programs. The drug addiction stories are (as
always) pretty amazing, with 14-year olds sounding like 35-year old
smack-heads, a large number of which seem at their wit's end with no bright
future in sight. Some of it is funny, some of it is scary, and some is just
plain meaningless, like a young female quaaluder who tells a longwinded
anecdote about driving a car on reds that fails to carry both punchline and
common sense. Perhaps the highpoint is a young (harelip?) man with a bad
speech impediment, who recounts his downfall from drugs in an equivocal
manner, as he "knew that he was going to be stupid anyway", after
which the narrator rushes to inform us that the guy in fact has an
"above average IQ". Another segment sounds quite a lot like the
dopers are putting the moderator on, with lots of inexplicable sniggering.
All over a solid piece of infotainment, and not without merits as anti-drug
propaganda, even in 2006.
My copy of this box-set came with a stack of related
material, incl government brochures and so forth, but most likely they had
been inserted by the concerned parents who originally purchased it. There is
a 5-page insert that definitely belongs to the box-set; click scans below to
read it and catch a bit of the "Drug Scene" vibe.
©
LamaSivartDoz 2006