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Drug War Casualties

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.”...