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U.K. Questions about NarCONon * Drug Ed Forum Blog 1/18/07

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Drug Education Forum Blog: Questions about Narconon http://drugeducationforum.blogspot.com/2007/01/questions-about-narconon.html

Drug Education Forum Blog
A blog to highlight news items about drug education issues and how they affect drug education in England

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Questions about Narconon

David Liddington, the Conservative MP forAylesbury, has been asking Parliamentary Questions about Narconon (not a Drug Education Forum member).

Here's the one to the DfES:

Mr. Lidington: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills whether he plans to issue guidance to schools about drug education programmes offered by Narconon.

Mr. Dhanda: The Department's guidance, "Drugs; Guidance for Schools" (DfES 2004) is clear that teachers should be the main providers of drug education and maintain responsibility for the overall drug education programme in their school. External contributors can be used where they add to the drug education programme a dimension that the teacher alone cannot deliver.

It is for schools and local authorities to decide whether to use the services of an external contributor to assist with their drug education programme, and if so who this should be.

Here's the one to the Department of Health:

Mr. Lidington: To ask the Secretary of State for Health whether her Department has given financial support to drug education or treatment programmes by Narconon during the last five years.

Caroline Flint: The Department has given no funding to Narconon in the last five years.

For those that don't know anything about Narconon Wikipedia has a useful overview which starts by making it clear that they are a:

substance abuse treatment program associated with the Church of Scientology. Narconon is not associated with the 12-step drug treatment program, Narcotics Anonymous (NA), nor is it related to Nar-Anon, a 12-step support group for friends and family of substance abusers.

The Wikipedia article outlines the controvercial nature of the history and claims made by Narconon and points me to this article in The Sunday Times 
which reports that Narconon has been working in a number of UK school.  The article says:

Devotees of the Church of Scientology have gained access to thousands of British children through a charity that visits schools to lecture on the dangers of drugs. A Sunday Times investigation has found that Marlborough College is one of more than 500 schools across Britain where the charity has taught.

Critics of the charity, Narconon, say it is a front to promote the teaching of Scientology — the controversial "religion" founded by L Ron Hubbard, the science fiction writer.

Schools contacted last week said they knew nothing about the charity's links with Scientology. There is no apparent reference to the church in its drugs education literature.
 
Posted by Andrew at 4:35 PM    
Labels: Narconon

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