Mobilization for Youth: Patchwork or Solution?

There are two signs on Manhattan’s E. 2nd St. One in neat blue letters announces the headquarters of Mobilization for Youth. The other in scrawled yellow paint stakes out 2nd St. as “Dragon’s Territory”; beneath it the same hand has painted its biography, “I Was a Teenage Junkie.”

Between these signs stands an investment of over fourteen million dollars on the part of federal, state and local agencies and the research of a team of social workers, psy...