Well, If I could tell you that I was there with him, what good would that do? For verification, why don't you interview him or his father? His father has already stated in print that his son (but he won't say which) got "counseling", and it is certaintly no secret in ST Petersburg where that "counselng" was or what the sembler's involvment with the seed was prior to the straight opening.
Here is an excerpt and link to an article from Florida trend magazine"
"Braggadocio it is not. The drug cause, in fact, was Sembler's entree to national politics. In 1973 Mel and Betty Sembler awoke to the realization that one of their sons was smoking pot. "Mel and I were completely shocked," recalls Betty Sembler.
"We saw this as a fundamental breakdown of everything we believed in: family, education, law and order, responsibility to the community. Drugs represented the very antithesis of these values - pure selfishness."
Their son (they won't say which one of the three) received counseling and kicked the habit.But other young people from the community, Mel and Betty realized, were not so fortunate. At once, the Semblers pledged support and money to local drug prevention and treatment causes. And in 1976, after the closing of St. Petersburg's only juvenile drug treatment center, Mel Sembler founded a privately funded, nonprofit drug rehabilitation program called Straight."
http://www.floridatrend.com/issue/defau ... 1&d=5/1/97Now, it is clear for us in the know that Mel was carefully avoiding saying the "counseling" was actually the Seed, or that the the closing of the "juvenile treatment center" was the Seed. Also, virtually all of the founders of Straight were seed parents that missed their beloved cult and the hero status that they had annointed themselves with for their efforts to eradicate drug use by imprisoning the "counter culture" druggies in "treatment". The Seed was gone, and the Straight was just an extension of that program. he founders and staff members where all Seed people.
Get it?
