Drug War Casualties

(Note: An edited version of this column originally appeared on FoxNews.com. It ran for two weeks. After a representative from Straight contacted Fox with concerns about accuracy, the column was pulled. As yet, no one has articulated to me what aspects of the column have been challenged. I stand by my reporting. That's why I'm reposting the column here.)

In 1980, when Samantha Monroe was 13, a classmate passed out mini bottles of booze, similar to the kind served on airplanes. Samantha was given one, but quickly flushed it down a toilet when school officials were notified. A local detective was called in. That detective told Samantha’s parents he suspected she had a drug problem. That she’d been “clean” when school officials confronted her, he said, was a fluke. He suggested they enroll her in the Sarasota branch of Straight, Inc., an aggressive drub rehab center for teens. The detective also happened to sit on the board of Straight Sarasota.

Samantha spent the next two years of her life surviving Straight. She was beaten, starved, and denied toilet privileges for days on end. She describes her “humble pants,” a punishment that forced her to wear the same pants for six weeks at a time. Because she was allowed just one shower a week, the pants often filled with feces, urine and menstrual blood. Often she was confined to her “timeout” closet for days. She gnawed through her cheek during those sessions, hoping she’d bleed to death. She says that after she was raped by a counselor she calls Rob, “the wonderful state of Florida paid for and forced me to have an abortion.”

There are hundreds of stories like Samantha’s. Wes Fager enrolled his son in a Springfield, VA chapter of Straight on the advice of a high school guidance counselor. Fager didn’t see his son again until three months later after he’d escaped – and developed severe mental illness. Since then, Fager’s set out to clear the air on Straight. He has accumulated stories like Samantha’s and his son’s on a clearinghouse website. He’s collected stories of suicides and attempted suicides, rapes, forced abortions, molestations, physical abuse, lawsuits, court testimonies and extensive documentation of profound psychological abuse at Straight chapters all over the country.

Today, Straight’s founders, Mel and Betty Sembler, have enormous influence over U.S. drug policy. They serve on the boards of most every major domestic anti-drug program. They’re behind efforts to defeat medicinal marijuana initiatives all over the country. They’re also proud and unrepentant about Straight, Inc. – they mention their influence upon its founding in their official bios (here and here) -- despite the horrors that have surfaced about the program’s history. As more and more U.S. states turn to mandatory treatment instead of incarceration for minor drug offenses, as the trend toward “boot camp” style rehab centers grows more and more en vogue, and as Mel and Betty Sembler continue to flex political muscle in the power corridors of the drug war, the story of Straight, Incorporated is one worth hearing.

Straight was spun off from an earlier Florida rehab program called The Seed, established in 1972. After a Congressional investigation of The Seed turned up evidence of brainwashing and cult-like mind control tactics, Congress cut The Seed’s funding. But a Florida Congressman named Bill Young persisted. He found advocates in Republican boosters Mel and Betty Sembler, and persuaded them to start a similar rehab center in St. Petersburg, which they called “Straight, Incorporated.”

Despite allegations of abuse from escaped members and pending lawsuits, over the next fifteen years Straight, Inc. won laudatory praise in Republican circles. Luminaries from Nancy Reagan to Princess Diana visited Straight branches and touted their successes (though by most estimates only about 25% of Straight “clients” ever completed the program). Straight went on to open affiliate branches all over the country, including Virginia, Florida, Ohio, Texas and Georgia.

Soon enough, Straight’s tactics caught up to it in the courts, if not with its political cheerleaders. A college student won a false imprisonment claim of $220,000 in 1983, and another claim cost Straight, Inc. $721,000 in 1990. A Straight, Inc. spin-off called “Kids of North Jersey” settled a $4.5 million abuse claim in 2000. Straight chapters across the country began to shut down, culminating with the last branch in Atlanta closing in 1993.

But the Straight philosophy was far from finished. Many chapters and directors reopened new clinics that employed the same tactics under different names -- such as “KIDS,” “Growing Together,” and “SAFE,” the latter having been visited and praised by Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, despite the fact that a Miami television station reported widespread Straight-like abuse at the facility in a 2000 expose.

Cult expert and intervention specialist Rick Ross says there’s an unfortunate market for “rehab” centers that take burdensome children off the hands of troubled parents. “It amazes me that despite the pattern of complaints and abuse allegations, Straight chapters can simply change their names and continue to operate,” he says.

As the bad publicity and lawsuit losses mounted throughout the 1990’s, the umbrella organization Straight, Inc. changed its name in 1996 to the Drug Free America Foundation, which thrives today under federal subsidies, including $400,000 in the year 2000 and $320,000 from the Small Business Administration.

Most troubling, however, is the considerable and continuing political clout of Straight, Inc.’s founders. Former President Bush once shot a television commercial for DFAF, and designated the Semblers’ program as one of his “thousand points of light.”

Long a presence in Florida Republican circles, Mel Sembler was tapped as ambassador to Australia in 1989. Today he serves the younger President Bush as ambassador to Italy, and he served on the board of the 2000 Republican National Convention.

Betty Sembler co-chaired Florida Governor Jeb Bush’s campaign committee. In return, the governor declared August 8, 2000 “Betty Sembler Day” in Florida, due, he said, to her work “protecting children from the dangers of drugs.” She also serves on the board of DARE, the largely failed anti-drug program for elementary school students.

DFAF also worked with then-governor Bush on anti-drug programs in Texas, and today claims to have his ear on national drug policy as well. Indeed, Arizona prosecutor and Sembler favorite Rick Romley was on President Bush’s short list for drug czar. Though Romley wasn’t nominated, Bush did tap staunch drug warrior John Walters, which caused Betty Sembler to remark, “ . . .we have lacked the leadership and support of the White House . . . until now.”

The cult expert Ross, a self-described Republican, is awed at the adulation still heaped on the Semblers. “It’s really shocking,” he says, “that the Semblers are still lauded and honored after all that’s come out about their organization.”

Staunch drug warriors like the Semblers believe a win-at-all-costs approach is the only way to remove the scourge of drugs from society. Such is why they can be unrepentant about the lives destroyed within the walls of Straight facilities, and in fact still boast that a program they founded “cured” 12,000 teens of drug abuse.

Last year, a reporter from Canadian marijuana advocacy magazine Cannabis Culture asked Betty Sembler in person about the horror stories he’d read from Straight survivors. Sembler replied, “They should get a life. I am proud of everything we have done. There's nothing to apologize for. The legalizers are the ones who should be apologizing.”

That’s the attitude of the drug war’s power duo. Shattered lives, suicides, forced abortions, fractured psyches – all necessary casualties of the drug war, and nothing to apologize for.

"When Christ returns to rule over man then you may have a point. Right now though, man has to struggle along as best it can."

I agree whole heartedly. Man has to struggle best we can, and we need to learn to understand just exactly what are the rights God gave us, and what are man made wishes, wants, and desires. People often confuse their wants and desires with rights. For example some think they have a "right to a job", or a "right to a decent living wage". These are not God given rights, these are man made desires, just like the desires to shape our society.

I'm sorry I dragged this post off topic.

I get a little frustrated when people use the word "right" to apply to all sorts of things having nothing to do with "God given - inalienable rights". Since this is a political forum, I felt the urge to correct this misunderstanding.

I don't believe I have a disagreement with ReaganMan or TexasForever about what society can do. I believe we are in disagreement over semantics of what a "right" is. Perhaps what they mean to say is "Society has the need, or desire, or overwhelming agreement on something, but it has no rights as enumerated in the BOR.

My frustration is because the word "right" is now days used to describe all kinds of man made wants and desires. I've heard such things on this forum as "I have a right to smoke free restaurant environment", or "I have a right to a decent neighborhood", and such things.

What they really should say is, they feel it is important and worthwhile for them to have such things, but they use the word "right". Unfortunately, the left liberal people use the word "right" in the same manner to assault us conservatives all the time. Such things as "homosexual rights", or "animal rights". I am disappointed when I see conservatives on this forum make the same mistake and continue to spread the misuse of the term "rights".

Sorry again to drag this post off topic, I'll stop now.

Excuse me, but how can you not be outraged?

People like RaygunMan and the other WODers are never outraged by anything like this. In fact, I'm sure they approve of heavy handed draconian punishment for anyone who questions their holy war (or is it a "jihad"?) on drugs.

Not only do they wish to see this kind of system in place for drug users, (only the illegal kind, of course...don't you dare try to take away their six-pack or martini) but for anyone who even dares to disagree with their "superior morality". After all, they, and only they know what's best for us.

Most of them are mindless drones who worship every aspect of government.

After all, if you are against the war on drugs you must be a druggie. That's the extent of their logic.

In this case, the decrease in overall drug use, occured in direct relationship with the increase in anti-drug funding, for law enforcement activities and adherence to strict sentencing guidelines, by the criminal justice system. In other words, the correlation exists and is obvious.

You haven't established that the increase in enforcement caused a decrease in drug use: As a car sped up, a bird flying above slowed down. Was the bird influenced by the car or did it slow down for another reason?

Its proper courtesy on FreeRepublic, if your going to mention a FReeper by name, to "PING" that individual to the thread. Otherwise it's like talking behind someones back. Very rude behavior.

Thanks.

PS- Hey ActionNewsBill, my screen name is "Reagan Man" and in the future, I would appreciate you calling me by my proper screen name. Theres no reason to revert to personal insults either.

Personally, I don't think more than a small percentage of the self-avowed libertarians are actually drug users, and I resent the implication that they are all so, just as much as I resent the implication made by some that those who support prohibition at any level of government are either drug dealers or LEO's or statist worshippers. I have seen a handful of libertarians admit to their drug use, and they are usually the pretty cool ones who do not exhibit emotive problems.

There were increases in funding for the national drug control policy throughout the 1970`s and this trend accelerated under President Reagan in the 1980`s. Local law enforcement agencies busted many drugs dealers and users/abusers. The criminal justice system put these dopers in jail, were they belonged and were they couldn't harm society. All the statistics I've seen, from SAMHSA, the DEA website, the Bureau of Jusice Statistics and several others, point to these facts as conclusive evidence that across the board reductions in drug use, were brought about through increases in law enforcement efforts and a pro-active court system that handed down proper sentencing to the drug criminals. Those are the facts.

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