2004 History Digest for CIS and UK
At one time, Russia and the other members of the Commonwealth of Independent States struggled with their drug addiction problems without help. Heroin was the great scourge of this region due to the proximity of Afghanistan, the world’s largest heroin-producing country. But as Narconon centers began to be established in Russia and other CIS countries, there was a way to fight back with drug rehabilitation and prevention.
By 2004, there were seven rehab centers and eleven drug prevention centers in the CIS. In the CIS alone, the eleven drug prevention groups delivered their presentations to an average of 100,000 students each year.
The Moscow Narconon center started as a drug education activity that just offered the Narconon Communication Course and assists as part of the drug-free withdrawal. By 1994, it developed into a full-service inpatient rehabilitation center. By 2004, it was offering training to Narconon staff from other Russian centers. They also began to help fund and support expansion activities in other areas.
Now the CIS has drug education groups in St. Petersburg, Kharkov, Pavlodar and Siberia plus drug education lectures are also delivered by staff of drug rehab facilities in Kazakhstan, Krasnoyarsk and Dimitrovgrad. Wins, endorsements and acknowledgements poured in from cities where these groups offered their classes.
In St. Petersburg, the group delivered lectures in an orphanage and received requests from the St. Petersburg State University and the Institute of Foreign Languages to receive presentations. The Education Department of one of the districts has even recommended Narconon lectures to its schools.
The Director of Narconon Siberia delivered more than 680 presentations to more than 17,000 people. He commented that he had received “more than 5,000 written testimonials where kids tell about the correct choice they have made regarding drugs after my lectures.”
In Dimitrovgrad, a strong endorsement was received from a Doctor of Biology from the Institute of Biochemistry and Genetics in Ufa City. She observed that 90% of Narconon graduates remain drug-free after the Narconon program and that they restore relationships with families and have no more problems with law enforcement. She noted the superiority of the Narconon program over traditional programs and recommended the establishment of more Narconon centers in Russia.
In Barnaul at the southern edge of Russia, in drug prevention team is well-known for its presentations and cooperative activities in the community. One of the events they stage in cooperation with the Youth Committee was a lesson with the theme “Don’t Even Try” that was given to 200 young people at a discotheque.
The drug education team in Kharkov has succeeded in creating tremendous growth in the past year. The two teams have expanded their drug ed activities to reach 46,000 people in one year! Over a six-year span, Marina Gribanova, the director of one of the groups, has reached more than 250,000 students with 2,400 lectures. In Kharkov itself, she has reached 56% of the teenagers.
The Kharkov groups have received 200 official recognitions for their services in the last several years. The director of one of the local schools had a study executed to find out the results of the Narconon drug education curriculum. He found that in the area served by this drug education group, drug addiction had dropped 10% while in other regions it had increased by 12%.
More Wins from European Countries
In the Netherlands, a student on the Narconon program was at risk for losing her child due to the prior drug addiction. But after the judge heard about the Narconon program that the mother was involved in, he ruled that the mother should keep her child, despite the requests of Child Welfare staff.
The outpatient rehab center Narconon Deutschschwiez built a new sauna for delivery of the Narconon New Life Detoxification and established a kiosk in a public area where they could give out information about Narconon and answer people’s questions about addiction.
Austrian Narconon drug educators attended an exhibition at a big shopping center in Vienna where they were able to hand out “10 Things” booklets and help people understand addiction and the solution to drug abuse. As a result, they were asked to hold anti-drug weeks in the city and deliver drug education in more venues. Thus they were able to reach people attending a championship table soccer (foosball) event and deliver drug education to more than 3,000 people at a shopping mall in Vienna.
Narconon Hastings Opens in the UK
As a result of the hard work of two veteran members of Narconon International staff and Narconon staff and supporters in the UK, the new residential Narconon center of Hastings was opened. The establishment of this center grew out of the expansion of the Bermondsey center in London. When more people demanded service than could be accommodated, a beautiful location on the southern coast of England was located and renovated. When the renovations were done, the students began to pour in.
As 2004 closed, hundreds of thousands of people in the UK and Europe had heard about Narconon through outreach activities and drug education.