Straight, Incorporated 12 Nov, 2001
Orwellian anti-drug programs humiliate and abuse youth in a horrifying program of mind control.
In 1982, Leigh Ann Bright was a rebellious teenager who used marijuana and alcohol. Her mom told her she had to talk to counselors at a St Petersburg, Florida drug rehab institution called Straight, Incorporated.
A week before her 15th birthday, Bright went to Straight's building, a converted warehouse. She began chatting with two other teenaged girls, who suddenly announced that they were "peer counselors" who believed Bright had a "serious drug problem" requiring long-term treatment. They told Bright to sign a form agreeing to participate in Straight's residential rehab program. She tried to get out of the room and asked to speak to her parents. She was prevented from exiting. Other Straights joined in, telling Bright she would be "court ordered into the program" unless she signed the consent form.
"They said I could leave after 14 days," Bright recalled recently.
Now a 33-year-old accountant who worked full time while earning two bachelor's degrees, Bright says she is "haunted" by what happened to her in Straight's warehouse nearly 20 years ago.
For six months, not 14 days, Bright was sequestered in the Straight program against her will, without a shred of peace or privacy, without permission to communicate freely with the outside world.
"I was crying and desperate. I was a prisoner," she says.
Going to the bathroom, showering, getting dressed, sleeping, eating - the youngster's most intimate acts were monitored by Straight staffers, most of whom were troubled teens who had been in the program longer than her.
During the day, Bright and hundreds of other youngsters were forced to participate in bizarre rituals. They were required to write "moral inventories," detailing how drugs and sex "ruined" their lives. They sat through hours of lurid encounter group sessions in hot, unventilated rooms, listening to emotional discussions and Straight's Orwellian philosophy.
Bright felt she had been kidnapped by a cult-like organization.
"Straight had its own really weird lingo and some group customs," Bright recalls, describing fellow inmates who jumped around, frothed at the mouth, and waved their arms in reckless abandon during surreal "motivational-confessional" sessions in which they were compelled to publicly disclose their deepest, darkest secrets.
Girls and boys were in separate areas of a large room during these sessions.
"You could hear the boys complaining about being sexually abused," Bright said. "It was like any prison - if somebody wants you and can overpower you, you're fair game. Their stories were horrible." continued...
http://www.cannabisculture.com/articles/2072.html
Arnold Trebach:
Many premier medical people…
have been involved in organizations that harm youth.
Dr Arnold Trebach, a political science professor, public interest attorney, and author, founded the institute in 1999 after retiring from the Drug Policy Foundation, which he founded in 1986. During his 50 year career as a civil rights official, professor, and reform advocate, the 73-year-old Trebach has increasingly focused on the drug war as a symbol of what's wrong with America. Trebach's 1987 book, The Great Drug War, is perhaps the best single volume about the subject. Its unparalleled credibility and comprehensiveness are grounded in Trebach's abundant skills as a policy analyst, legal scholar, and investigative journalist.
The book contains a chapter describing in chilling detail the incarceration of Fred Collins, now a doctorate-holding professor of mathematics, in the St Petersburg Straight facility in 1982. Collins did not have a drug abuse problem, but his brother George was already in the program, and Straight often demanded that siblings of inmates also be enrolled in residential treatment. Fred Collins' parents tricked him into entering the Straight building. He was held there in abysmal conditions against his will until he escaped four months later.
Goal: To show how much God loves us and what His Son, Jesus, went through for us.
Flogging involved being tied naked to a pole and whipped with straps with bone and steel embedded in them. Flogging ripped the skin right off of a person.
Bush. Religious drug treatment in Texas
Putting Faith In a Social Service Role; Church-Based Providers Freed From Many Rules
CORPUS CHRISTI, Tex. - Over the door of one church-based drug treatment center in Houston, a sign printed in foot-high letters announces: "Drug Addiction Is NOT a Disease. It's a Sin." At another, clients pass by a poster of an addict in a hospital bed, ripping IV tubes out of his arms and throwing his pills in the garbage. An angel hovers nearby, offering her protection from this plague of prescriptions.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?J17E13B28
GEORGE W. BUSH: THE RECORD IN TEXAS
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n602/a01.html
U.S. Rightist Republican Drug War
GOP Holy War. And hate radio, hate television...
http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/y/gop.htm
Drug War links
Including MMM WTO A16 J4J3. Rally links...
http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/y/links.htm
'Relax Your Muscles as Much as Possible'
Human Rights Watch has documented abominable conditions for children in detention in countries around the world. In the United States (Colorado, Georgia, Louisiana, and Maryland), Pakistan, Jamaica, among other countries, children are subjected to excessive force, inadequate medical and mental health care, and are provided with little or no education. Often, these children are placed in the facilities along side adults, exposing them to physical and sexual abuse.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?E1CC63B28
Stop Prisoner Rape
http://www.spr.org
Addiction: A Brain Ailment, Not a Moral Lapse
http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread17430.shtml
Marijuana Could Help Cocaine Addicts Kick Habit
Smoking marijuana could help prevent recovering cocaine addicts relapsing, research on rats suggests. Dutch and US scientists deprived cocaine-addicted rats of the drug for 14 days and then exposed them to environmental cues associated with their drug-taking. Such cues often trigger relapse in recovering human addicts.
http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread11031.shtml
Stepping Off Hard Drugs With Cannabis
http://www.potpride.com/steppingstone.htm
Americans United for Separation of Church and State
http://www.au.org
Courts, city halls and other units of government should refrain from displaying religious symbols because such actions send the message that the state has a favored religion and that people who do not share that faith are second-class citizens. Learn more...
http://tinyurl.com/5dumx
Bush Drinking Played Role in Policy
President Bush's personal commitment to pass his embattled "Faith-Based Initiative" was influenced, in part, by the role faith played in Bush's decision to quit drinking at age 40, Republican Conference Chairman J.C. Watts, R-Okla., said Tuesday.
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread10343.shtml
Warning To States on Funding Faith-Based Charities
http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread11781.shtml
Judge in Wisconsin Voids a Faith-Based Initiative
In a case widely seen as the first legal challenge to the constitutionality of President Bush's religion- based initiative, a federal court in Wisconsin has ordered the state to stop giving money to a drug and alcohol addiction program that relied heavily on Christian spirituality in its approach to treatment.
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11725.shtml
It's Not About Church and State
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread8998.shtml
Public Serpants
A nursing home aide earning minimum wage caring for Alzheimer's patients is an unskilled laborer. A grade school teacher pulling down $25,000 a year in a crumbling inner-city school is barely a professional. But a politician reaping power, pay, perks and retirement packages is a public servant.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?K6A822767
At the first meeting he was asked how much he smoked, to which he replied, 10 joints a day. They started calling him a liar, because in their opinion, more than 3 joints a week is considered chronic use. While he didn't think 10 J's a day was excessive, he was totally off their scale, they really didn't believe someone could smoke that much, and after being called a liar several times, he left.
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