"STREET KIDS"
Synopsis of A Screenplay by Dr. Don E. Miller
There are two million, mostly drug addicted, homeless children under 18 in America. They live
under our freeways, in boxes and in our back alleys. Their daily mission: to get high by whatever means they can, which often
includes selling their own bodies. They are dying in droves of AIDS, murder, and drug overdoses. United States still insists
on focusing on supply reduction (going after the drug smugglers and dealers) as the major strategy in the drug wars, with
poor results. The nations in the world most focused on reducing demand (getting the user off drugs) have the least drug problems.
This is a fast paced, action packed movie with a powerful story line depicting a momentous undertaking
at reform. The hundreds of existing drug war/drug violence movies depict the problems but pose no solutions. "Street Kids"
follows Doc Brennan as he rescues our forgotten homeless children from the streets. The difference between his program and
most existing programs is that, due to the stringent follow-up built into Doc's program, once Doc Brennan rescues a kid, they
stay rescued.
The movie is set in San Diego and opens in an ambulance careening through the streets, sirens
screaming. Inside, Doc Brennan comforts a hallucinating overdosed teenager while paramedics hook up life support systems.
The youth is dead of heart failure before the ambulance reaches the hospital.
A battered overdosed teenager is seeking refuge and medical help at Doc's storefront teenage
drug rehab clinic. Buster and Dallas, her pimp and pusher, force their way in and demand that she go with them. They accuse
her of ripping them off. They attack Doc with knives when he insists that they let her go. Doc breaks her pusher's arm and
has them arrested. Later, an angry Buster in a cast returns to burn Doc's clinic to the ground. One teenager sleeping at the
clinic, waiting for a rehab slot, dies horribly in the flames.
With his program in flames, Doc screams at Senator Fuller, who is promising on a TV news broadcast
to solve the drug problem with more cops and jails. Doc gets an appointment with Senator Fuller and shows him the book "Drug
Wars: The Final Battle," a plan for a comprehensive drug rehab program. Doc promises that it will solve the drug problem by
ending demand, which would automatically put the suppliers out of business. Senator Fuller becomes convinced. He pushes a
trial implementation of Doc's plan, which opens and is housed in a phased-out Navy base, through the legislature.
Lucky, sweating and in withdrawal, tries to pry open a parking meter for dope money. Doc's rehab
van, manned by four men in body armor, snatch Lucky off the street. Lucky is admitted, examined, washed, deloused, and detoxed.
Doc explains to an auditorium filled with teens that he is going to teach them how to work and how to have fun without drugs,
with the fun first. Doc conducts a group therapy session in a chapel. Interspersed with scenes of four assassins speeding
toward the base to get Doc, is a mock funeral. Lucky is facing his anguish about parental abandonment. He rises sobbing from
a coffin just as, outside, the assassins' vehicle is blown apart.
The rest of the movie is more non-stop action interspersed with emotionally charged scenes of
rescue from addiction. There is another flip-flop by Governor Fuller, and a final show down with the mob that has been trying
to destroy Doc's program. Finally Doc's program to rescue the homeless young druggies is spread throughout California.
This movie, in action adventure format, depicts the implementation, on a population of homeless
teenagers, the drug abuse intervention program described in great detail in Dr. Miller's book, "Drug Wars: The Final Battle."
Click on "Drug Wars" in directory for more information about the book.