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Narconon treatment center hearing delayed

LA Daily News, USA
July 26, 2006
Sue Doyle
www.dailynews.com

ReligionNewsBlog.com • Wednesday July 26, 2006

LOS ANGELES – A public hearing on a planned drug and alcohol treatment center with ties to the Church of Scientology was postponed Tuesday over concerns about the center’s rural location in upper Bouquet Canyon.

A proposal to establish a Narconon center came before the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and drew a crowd of about 500.

Concerns about traffic, fire and safety, and flood control remanded plans back to the Regional Planning Commission, which had approved the project in March. Tuesday’s hearing was called by Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, who received complaints after the commission’s approval.

There is no date set yet for its return to the board.

What you should know about Narconon

The Scientology organization is a commercial enterprise that masquerades as a religion, and that increasingly acts like a hate group. It preys on vulnerable people through a variety of front groups, including Narconon (which operates in some prisons under the name “Criminon”).

Scientology is based entirely on fantasy and junk-science

Scientology is an unethical organisation, whose scriptures encourage and condone hate, harassment, and other unethical behavior

Scientology is rooted in the science fiction of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard – a man who had trouble telling fiction from fact.

Investigate Scientology’s medical claims

A critical analysis of the ‘Purification Rundown’

Narconon Exposed

Stop-Narconon.org: Protecting the Vulnerable from Narconon/Scientology

Research resources on Narconon

Narconon International aims to open a 66-bed facility nearly Leona Valley on 30.4 acres formerly used for a boarding school.

Narconon President Clark Carr said that if the center had been approved Tuesday, work would have begun immediately. Renovations are expected to take at least six months.

Yet Carr supported the county’s efforts toward improvements.

�We’re here for the long haul,� Carr said.

The facility is designed to treat up to 66 adults, whose average stay would be three to four months. Narconon plans no new buildings on the land, which borders the Angeles National Forest, but will add parking.

Treatment used in the program, such as sweating out toxins, has been questioned by critics, who charge that the facility is a front to lure people into the Church of Scientology. The treatment program began about 40 years ago and is based on the principles of a book by L. Ron Hubbard, the late founder of the Church of Scientology.

When asked of those criticisms, Carr called them incorrect and irrelevant. He said there was no religious indoctrination in the program.

�It’s hard enough work to get someone off heroin or alcohol without getting into the religious issues,� he said.

Word of the alcohol and drug rehabilitation center planned on Bouquet Canyon Road had worried some Leona Valley residents, who sent a letter to the county Planning Commission last winter with concerns the facility would disrupt the rural community.

Some of those residents arrived at Tuesday’s hearing to testify. Among them was Jan Powell, a Leona Valley Town Council member. She helped organize a community meeting at which residents could meet with Narconon representatives and learn about the proposed center.

Consumer Alert: Scientologists “unqualified”

“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

Scientology Kills

Research resources on Scientology

Powell said she was open-minded at first and wanted to know more about Narconon. Initially representatives told her the organization was not connected with the Church of Scientology, but later they told her there was a relationship. That’s when she changed her mind.

�It’s not that they’re associated with Scientology,� she said. �It’s the fact that they were deceitful to me.�

Vance Kirkpatrick, a former sheriff’s deputy, also came to the hearing. The Leona Valley resident said the location for the treatment center is too remote for quick responses from police or firefighters in case of emergencies.