The Chronicle/Montreal's west end paper

MP denies knowledge of endorsed organization's ties to Scientology
Scientology denies ties to anti-drug organization


Article online since March 5th 2008, 9:30



MP denies knowledge of endorsed organization's ties to Scientology
Scientology denies ties to anti-drug organization

BY RAFFY BOUDJIKANIAN

raffy.boudjikanian@transcontinental.ca

West Island Liberal MP Bernard Patry defended his recent endorsement
of anti-drug organization Narconon Trois Rivière's prevention campaign
despite the latter's supposed links to the Church of Scientology.

"I did not know that they might be tied into the Scientology church,"
said Patry, who represents the Pierrefonds-Dollard riding. "As a
former physician, when I started looking into this, I just wanted to
try to find out what type of treatment the drug addicts are getting."

Some anonymous e-mails of complaint were sent to The Chronicle's inbox
about two weeks ago, after the newspaper's website ran an article
about Patry signing a promotional banner, pledging to a life without
drugs. The banner campaign was spearheaded by Narconon Trois Rivières,
an organization that runs a drug rehabilitation centre in Trois
Rivières and preaches drug prevention to schoolchildren.

Globally, the Narconon network has run into problems in several
countries in the past. In 1988 in Madrid, Spain, 11 members of the
Church of Scientology were arrested, according to the St. Petersburg
Times, and a local judge decried how Narconon swindled its clients and
lured them toward Scientology. In 2003, the state of Oklahoma in the
United States narrowly voted down a resolution honouring the work of
Narconon Arrowhead, reported the Tulsa World. Last year, the United
Kingdom's prison systems ombudsman recommended Narconon not to be
allowed in jails due to its connection to Scientology, reported the
Sunday Times.

Jean Larivière, a local Scientologist and spokesperson for its church
in Montreal, said the trials in Spain ended with victory for the
Scientologists. They were also officially recognized as a religion in
that country in late 2007. Though personally unaware of situations in
Oklahoma and the United Kingdom, he said Narconon runs into trouble
due to opposition from doctors and psychiatrists. He called Narconon a
completely separate, secular organization from Scientology. "Narconon
uses a very specific, very minor part of the writings (of Scientology
founder L. Ron Hubbard)," he said.

According to Larivière, medical and psychiatric institutions oppose
groups that use non-medicinal approaches to cure drug addicts.
"Narconon is at the forefront of these groups," he said. That is why
it constantly finds itself targeted by the aforementioned
institutions, who use the group's origin as a "scarecrow," said
Larivière.

However, one sociologist does see a connection between the church and
the anti-drug group.

"Scientology tries to get politicians to endorse Narconon," said Dr.
Stephen Kent, a sociologist at the University of Alberta who has
studied the religion for years. "The pattern is long-standing," he
added.

"I will not respond to that at all," Patry said about Scientology
targeting politicians. "I'm a Catholic," he added. "There are
Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Jews and all kinds of religions in my
riding."

Larivière dismissed Kent's charges, accusing him of being biased in
his research and cherry-picking facts that suit an anti-Scientology
agenda.

Some other politicians have signed the banner. Jean Patrick Laflamme,
a political attaché to ADQ MNA Hubert Benoît in Montmorency, said
Benoît did not know of any ties between Narconon and Scientology when
he undertook that action. No politician would knowingly support an
organization linked to Scientology, he added.

According to Carole Arvisais, community relations director for
Narconon Trois Rivières, their program is open to any alcohol or drug
addicts 18 years of age or older. Over the course of four or five
months, patients go "cold turkey," replacing their drug intake with
vitamins and proteins. They then begin to undertake three to four hour
sauna sessions to sweat out drug toxins that get stuck in body fat
tissues, she said while at Patry's riding office last month. Patients
come to Narconon Trois Rivières from all over Canada and different
countries.

"It sounds pretty pseudo-scientific," said Joseph Rochford, an
assistant professor at the Department of Psychiatry at McGill
University who had not heard of Narconon before being contacted for
this story. "It's going to depend a lot on what drug people are
taking," he said. "Some drugs are lypophillic," he added, which means
they are susceptible to get absorbed into body fat. However, alcohol
does not have this property, he said. He advocated for a blend of
medicinal treatment and social and psychological follow-ups for drug
addicts.

Narconon boasts of a 70 per cent success rate.

"The average (in the field) is under 50 per cent," Rochford said.

Founded by American science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard in the
1950s, Scientology teaches its adepts that humans are immortal beings
that have not fully realized their potential. Scientologists start off
with a very basic level of knowledge of its scriptures and it has been
reported they may only progress further by paying money to learn more.
A church exists in Montreal on Papineau Avenue, and there are about
1,000 local members.

In small letters on the back of a promotional pamphlet aimed at
children called '10 choses que tes amis ne savent peut-être pas sur
les drogues,' (10 things your friends might not know about drugs),
Narconon Trois Rivières acknowledges it does use methodology based on
Hubbard's work. "When a person thinks about something," one page in
the pamphlet reads, "he sees an image in his mind (...) the mind
registers 25 images per second and classifies them to solve all
problems in life."

"I think you can find similar stuff to that (in Scientology
scriptures)," said Larivière, but he maintained that the excerpt
sounded quite secular to him.

A glossary at the Church of Scientology's official website defines
mental image pictures as "three-dimensional pictures which are
continuously made by the mind, moment by moment, containing colour,
sound and smell, as well as other perceptions. They also include the
conclusions or speculations of the individual."

Narconon Trois Rivières did not return several telephone requests for
follow-up interviews or a press release addressing issues raised in
this article.