Editor’s note: Today marks the final installment of guest blogger Marcus Chatfield’s eye-opening exploration of the role that peer-reviewed research played in facilitating the survival of Straight Inc. into the 1990s, as well as its ongoing legacy in coercive youth drug abuse treatment.
In the 1989 Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment article “Outcome of a Unique Youth Drug Abuse Program: A Follow-up Study of Clients of Straight Inc.”, Alfred S. Friedman, Richard Schwartz, and Arlene Utada state that 99 percent of Straight’s clients were white and that 30 percent of clients attended church regularly prior to intake. It is relevant to consider the type of teens that were recruited for “treatment,” as well as how they were recruited for treatment and why their parents placed them in Straight. Notably, several authors have reported that many clients at Straight were treated for a disease they didn’t have. This was due in large part to Straight’s assertion that even the experimental use of alcohol or marijuana was the symptom of a disease. And because this disease was the cause of even initial drug use, treatment was required whether teens had experimented with drugs or not. Many clients in Straight were “dry druggies” who had never used an illegal substance but were displaying “druggie behavior.”
