Here's an excerpt from Pete Brady's article "
Straight, Incorporated" (November 12, 2001,
Cannabis Culture Magazine), in which Arnold Trebach recalls encountering Donald Ian MacDonald as a co-panelist at a drug conference in Australia:
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Arnold Trebach: "Many premier medical people... have been involved in organizations that harm youth."[/list]
Dr Arnold Trebach, a political science professor, public interest attorney, and author, founded the [Trebach I]nstitute 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.
During Mel Sembler's tenure as ambassador to Australia, Trebach attended an international drug conference in the "land down under."
"A pediatrician from St Petersburg, Donald Ian Macdonald, Straight's medical director, was on a panel with me," Trebach recalls. "He gave a speech saying that I represent the worst of America, that it was despicable that he had to share the stage with a drug pusher. In my response, I said, 'Dr Macdonald, thank you for revealing to this international audience, and our American ambassador and his wife, the viciousness and cowardice of drug warriors. You've worked at the right hand of the president of the United States, and I want everybody here to know that adopting American drug policy means adopting these vicious and cowardly sentiments.'
"During the evening session," continued Trebach, "my wife and I were sitting near Holland's head of drug policy when Mel Sembler got up and said, 'I'm glad that everyone is here, including Dr Trebach and Dr Macdonald. I have some experience in this field - I formed a drug treatment program called Straight Incorporated, to help children.' The Dutch official said to me, 'Oh, I have heard about that program. It's the Hitler Youth.'"
