Scientologists push anti-drug classes in schools
Published: 11 May 12 08:11 CET | Print version
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/40762/20120511/
The anti-drug organization Drogfritt, which has ties to Scientology, has been selling lectures and information on drug abuse to Swedish schools, information that includes significant factual errors, according to an investigation carried out by newspaper Svenska Dagbladet (SvD).
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During the lecture, the audience is told that dependency sets in from the first time someone tries a drug; that antidepressants, sleeping pills and paracetamol is stored in the body; and that people fall back into drug abuse through a so called “flashback”, when a drug “reawakens” in the body years or even decades after the person stopped using them.
But Swedish experts on drugs and drug abuse roundly repudiated the group's claims about how drugs interact with the body when approached by the paper.
“No, no, no, that’s not how it works. That’s a myth that circulates among certain drug users,” Johnson said about the "flashback" phenomenon.
One of the lecturers, Alexander Breeze, works with the lecture tours full time and talks to children, teenagers and parents about drugs, as well as at corporate events, holding some 250-300 lectures annually.
In interview with SvD, he made no secret of being a Scientologist.
However, according to Drogfritt, the organization is politically and religiously independent, but implement the Narconon prevention programme, which is based on Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s ideas.
And in 2003 the group's chairwoman, Åsa Graaf, was awarded the International association of Scientologists Freedom Medal for her work against drug abuse, according to SvD.
According to SvD’s investigation, 65 of Sweden’s 290 municipalities have purchased lecture series from the organization over the last three years to a value of 750,000 kronor ($108,000).
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If your children's school is in anyway connected to the Drogfritt program, write to the school informing them about the link between Drogfritt and the Church of Scientology, and make sure your child is not present at school when Drogfritt representatives are in the building.
Let Drogfritt alone! What kind of sick mind wants to stop children from getting anti-drug messages? Is the current bureaucracy dong such a great job?
The statements about so-called "factual errors" come from a vested interest whose costly but failed system of drug prevention, treatment and rehabilitation has actually _created_ tens of thousands of addicts in Sweden.
Remember that each addict must steal or steal 1500 extra Euros every week to feed his/her habit. That money either comes from your car or wallet--or from their children's dinner plates.
If the helpful Drogfritt program is fought, more addicts will be created by the stumbling, self-aggrandizing bureaucracy that pretends to be a drug program in Sweden. Why does failure have any right to criticize?
Isn't it time for some new ideas in this field? For some ideas that actually will work?
For a progressive country, the views in the article are very backward.
They state that someone has "reach back 26 years" to refer to critical information about the cult. OK, how about the last month? That's when health officials in Quebec shut down one of Narconon's factilities for failing to meet many of the basic standards of rehab programs.
It's a pretty common tack for Scientologists to smear critics of their anti-drug programs as being in favor of substance abuse or even drug dealers themselves. In truth, the "cures" advanced by programs such as Narconon have no basis in science and can be quite dangerous, such as having patients ingest massive amounts of Niacin, which can be toxic to the already compromised livers of many drug and alcohol abusers.
"Isn't it time for some new ideas?" Another common refrain from Scientologists. No, not if they're bad ones with no scientific basis. Those sorts of "new ideas" offer no concrete assistance for drug abusers and no real path to prevention or recovery. They do, however, offer a financial boon and PR relief for the struggling and scandal-plagued Church of Scientology.
You want your kids to be taught that
- prescribed medication such as anti-depressents are addictive from the first tablet you take? So you should not take prescribed medication if you don't want to become and addict
- that you will test positive for drugs years after you take them
- that paracetamol will affect you years later
It strikes me as totally irresponsible to say things like this to teenagers - dangerous even if they stop taking prescribed meds based on this message
I think that sects should be kept out of school
A: It's a very scientific way to separate fools from their money.
QED. Scientology is wrong.
But seriously, does Sweden allow creation theory to be taught in their schools in lieu of evolution? Of course not. Do they pay outside religious fundamentalists to lecture on creationism because the school system lacks it? Of course not. Religion based alternative theories to science have no place in public education. Drogfritt should be at least barred from lecturing at the public's expense, in a better world they should also be convicted for fraud and have to advertised that they are a religious, not scientific, based organization.
That describes all manmade mythologies.
Why am I paying taxes again?
For example, tell them that marijuana will make you insane. Then tell them that heroin will leave you unable to function as a human being.
After they see that their friends smoke marijuana with no detectable injury, what will they think about your statement about heroin?
When they discover you lied, you lose all your credibility.
My personal dislike for Scientology aside, the schoolsystem is a place of learning, so the fact that they're spreading wrong information alone should be enough to put and end to this group working in schools, taking money out of the schoolsystem that could have been used to proved real solid information from credible sources.
#15
02:00 May 12, 2012 by Mr. Dude
I would rather see my kid smoke a little weed then have her join a sinister mind control cult. Just Google "wally hanks beating a child" to hear a child being beat by a high level Scientology "minister".
You will see the same kind of child abuse and mind control in many other religions, (cults).