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Letter: Rehabilitation the correct answer to drug use
Canberra Times, Australia
March 8, 1999
WHEN SOMEONE talks of proposing that a safe injecting room be placed in our city centre, what is that person really asking for? Is it that we have gone into such apathy on the major drug problems that we have in our society that we have decided to support a deadly habit that not only affects the user but the rest of the community as well? The best help and safety that we can give users is effective rehabilitation. Free drugs and further drugs to help get rid of the original habit have only made things worse.
When you accept the drug problem, instead of fighting it with preventative and rehabilitative methods, we are giving the message to our younger generations that drugs are okay. Well, hard as it may be to face, we are helping to create the problem by not taking full responsibility for it and actually handling the real problem - drug use.
So let's create a drug-free society and actually handle the real problem.
Narconon is a drug-rehabilitation program that is being used successfully in many countries around the world. In Spain, for example, 62.2 per cent of the Narconon students had committed robberies before doing the program. After completing the Narconon program not a single report was made that any one of the graduates had committed any crimes. Sixty-nine per cent of the Narconon students had been heavily addicted to drugs and had been using them for an average of eight years prior to the Narconon program. After successfully completing the program, 78.6 per cent of the graduates were still drug-free four years later. It is easy to see that Australia is behind the mark in dealing with the drug problem.
Rehabilitation is the answer, not apathy. Let's do it!CASSANDRA STEWART
Holt