This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection.
The Drug Bug was an idea born through Allan Palmquist’s work with millions of Pennsylvanian high school students in 1970. At the time Palmquist was the Promotional Director at the Teen Challenge Training Center in Rehrersburg, Pennsylvania. Teen Challenge is a Christian organization that helps teens particularly those dealing with addiction.
The book was written with Frank M. Reynolds, an ordained minister and Executive Director of the Teen Challenge Training Center who worked closely with David Wilkerson who started Teen Challenge. Wilkerson wrote the foreword for The Drug Bug and his name may be familiar for we featured him in a previous post entitled The Best Selling Preacher.
The book details various groups that are curious about drugs or experimenting with them already and gives brief sketches of presumably true stories. There are short Question and Answer sections which come from graduates of the Teen Challenge program. It reads a bit like promotional material for this Christian organization, which is still in operation today.
To get a glimpse of society’s reaction in the early days of widespread youth drug addiction you can find The drug bug / by Al Palmquist and Frank Reynolds ; foreword by David Wilkerson. Minneapolis : Dimension Books, 1970. HV5824.Y68 P34 1970 in Widener’s collection.
Thanks to Alison Harris, Santo Domingo Project Manager, for contributing this post.