The simple fact is that Narconon is unsafe and ineffective

Harold's Journal
Editorial Opinion By RWL - 19 December 1991

We have printed, today, the reasoning behind the Mental Health Board's decision not to certify Narconon ® as legitimate health care in the state of Oklahoma. All of it. It's long. But it is important that somebody put it in the public record.

The simple fact is that Narconon is unsafe and ineffective as health care. Period. Never was, never will be. It's exactly what we said it was two and a half years ago: a snake oil cure, which at any price is a rip-off.

Thanks to the Mental Health Board, taxpayers' money and insurance benefits will not be wasted on Hubbard's Hucksters. Desperate people will no longer be fed false hopes and dangerous hocum, at least at Chilocco.

However, the Narconuts continue to blow smoke up the media's tailpipe, blaming their failure to pass muster on everyone and everything else except the real problem: It doesn't work, and it isn't safe.

Over 20 years they've been taking people's money and yet there is not one piece of scientifically credible evidence that their program works. Four of their own doctors admitted that at the hearings.

Is it safe? Sure, most people survive it. That's not the point. The point is that someone might not survive a 200 degree sauna. Keep in mind that water boils at 212 degrees. One can bake brownies in less than 5 hours at 200 degrees, but that's how long debilitated addicts are expected to spend in the Narconon sauna each day.

Considering that all of Narconon's staff (except their new medical director, incidentally) have been through the program at least once, it is not difficult to understand why they have such a hard time comprehending the board's decision.

Their brains have obviously been baked. Which is further indication that Narconon doesn't work and is unsafe.

We were especially unimpressed with Ms. Bimbo Barmaid for informing us of how arrogant and irresponsible the Mental Health Board is. Fortunately, she doesn't run anything but her mouth. And even then, she usually uses somebody else's words. Someone might pay attention to her if she had the credentials of even one member of the Mental Health Board. No matter how often she reads the script they give her, she can't make Narconon safe, and she can't make it work.

Narconon's latest tactic is to start a petition drive across the state.

They've been spotted lurking in the dorm halls at OSU, and were invited off the property at Wall-Mart and Food Warehouse in Ponca over the weekend. With assistance from the police.

The idea apparently is that if enough people sign a petition to do something that is dangerous, the people who know better will let them do it anyway. This is Narconon's concept of helping their fellow man? All the names in the world on a petition don't make the Narconon system work, and they don't make it safe.

In addition, they have again resorted to their old tactic of harassing people. At least one Mental Health Board member is getting strange phone calls and being followed where ever he goes. A lot of us in Newkirk have been through that foolishness before, too. Harassing board members doesn't make the Narconon program work, and it doesn't make it safe. Harassment like this just makes them more obnoxious.

Then there is the Citizen's Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), Narconon's sister org, which appears right on que to charge the Mental Health Department with undocumented heinous crimes everytime it looks like Narconon is going to get tossed out on it's ear. Trying to intimidate the Mental Health Department doesn't make the Narconon system safe, or effective.

All of these things they do, without addressing the real problem: Narconon is dangerous and it doesn't work. Until they recognize that fact, they might as well be trying to teach a pig to sing.

Which wastes a lot of time and it irritates the pig.