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Alley, Preston back Cruise in crusade

AZCentral.com, USA
July 11, 2005
www.azcentral.com

ReligionNewsBlog.com • Monday July 11, 2005

July 11, 2005 – Kirstie Alley and Kelly Preston aren’t newcomers to the fight against psychotropic drugs. In April, the two Scientologist actresses pleaded with Florida lawmakers to prohibit schools from denying services to students who refuse to take mood-altering drugs to treat mental disorders.

Consumer Alert: Scientology

“Scientology is evil; its techniques are evil; its practice is a serious threat to the community, medically, morally, and socially; and its adherents are sadly deluded and often mentally ill… (Scientology is) the world’s largest organization of unqualified persons engaged in the practice of dangerous techniques which masquerade as mental therapy.”
- Justice Anderson, Supreme Court of Victoria, Australia, quoted at What judges have to say about Scientology

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights is one of several Scientology front groups. It is involved in hate propaganda against psychiatry and psychiatrists.

“L. Ron Hubbard was addicted to psychiatric drugs from an early age until the day he died. Even though he told his followers not to take psychiatric drugs, he did so himself to the extent that he was addicted to them. They are the source of the very strange “OT” levels on which people are expected to talk to the souls of dead space aliens called “body thetans.” He was well aware of the mental problems he was having. Until he “invented” Dianetics® he had no money for psychiatric help and so he once wrote to the Veteran’s Administration and begged for psychiatric help.”
- Source: Hubbard begged for psychiatric help

Research resources on Scientology

Their tearful pleas did draw momentary media attention; however, nothing gets the word out like a box-office hunk whose whirlwind romance with a girl almost half his age just happens to coincide with press junkets to support two major summer releases.

Enter Tom Cruise, who has been on a quixotic battle against Ritalin as well as a war with Brooke Shields and her use of Paxil, using his new tabloid status as a means of squashing the opposition, even when it results in an emotionally-charged attack on Today show host Matt Lauer.

Now that Tom has paved the way, Alley and Preston are using the moment to address the issue with a renewed zeal. According to PageSix, the actresses compare Ritalin to cocaine and heroin in a letter they composed to the Food and Drug Administration.”

Parents in particular have been misled about the effects of these drugs, ” the letter warns. “They are highly addictive, and kids are using them more than street drugs to get high.”

The teachings of the Church of Scientology, founded by science-fiction writer and former frustrated psychiatry student L. Ron Hubbard, frown on all forms of psychiatry as well as the use of mind-altering drugs.