Dear Ed,
Please consider for publication:
Thank you for your continued coverage of the Bay County Boot Camp Scandal. I've been following it closely, and so often hearing the question, "Why isn't this a national scandal?"
I think I can make a relatively well informed answer to that question. Ready? Ok, here goes.
This isn't a national scandal on the order of OJ or Monica Lewinsky's Blue Dress because America approves of this sort of thing. Oh, they don't think they do. Of course not! But they do. Ever read Mark Twain's "War Prayer"? Same basic idea. We cheer for Zero Tolerance, elect anyone takes a 'tough on drugs', regardless of how intemperate their behavior or ideas.
But nobody's looking under the hood. Just go and look at the histories and affiliations of the people involved in this story. One of the core characters, Guy Tunnell, holds a seat on the advisory board of Drug Free America Foundation. I know those people. They literally held me captive and tortured me, for my own good of course, for two years when I was placed in their program, Straight, Incorporated. My parents, not the courts, placed me there. I had never been in any kind of trouble with the law!
They used essentially the same methods and philosophy there as we're now hearing about places like Bay County. It was maybe a little less physical and a little more emotional and mental abuse than Bay County Boot Camp.
THIS WAS OVER 20 YEARS AGO!!!
There were investigations; legal, civil, regulatory and journalistic. Christ on a crutch! Arnold Trebach devoted an entire chapter of his `85 book, The Great Drug War to that horrific program. The story got out, again and again. America yawned, scratched, and waited impatiently for their football scores or latest celebrity gossip.
The difference between national media and those particular journalists and publications who are so well investigating this story is that those journalists remember The Seed and Straight, Inc. and the people and organizations involved. And they know, by that, that we're in some deep doo doo.
Close and likely improper affiliations w/ DFAF and FDLE go all the way to the top of all three branches; LE (obviously), legislative (they actually signed a bill declaring Betty Sembler's birthday a state holiday, among other things) and the Governor and his wife also hold seats on that same board of advisors.
If the case ever gets to Charlie Crist, the Florida State Atty Gen., well his dad was on the St Petersburg Seed Advisory council, which brought the Seed to St Pete. If Mr. Christ was not drawn from the Seed parent group, I think he would be the only one who wasn't.
There is no legal or moral authority to stop this because the general public doesn't have, or care to know, the inside definitions of terms like TOUGHLOVE, Zero Tolerance, Safe and Drug Free this or that. Unless and until that changes, we'll just see round after round of consent orders, name changes, chinese fire drills among the officers of various corporations; the same old charade, in other words.
Please wake up! Under current law, your kid could land up on a slab for inadvertantly breaking any number of our new and improved and ever growing Zero Tolerance policies.
Sincerely,
Ginger Warbis
[snipped contact info]
I'm a Florida native, current refugee to Pennsylvania. My family became involved w/ the Seed in around `70. By the time I escaped Straight in `80, most of my large family had scattered to other states. It was a long hard road w/ orphanhood at the end. And I know a lot of people w/ similar stories. These people who make these policies are patently evil.
Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.
--Rep. Robert L. Henry, TX December 22, 1914 (quoting Lincoln)
