Prevention Programs DO WORK

Reaching Youth with Effective Drug Education

  by Mari Werner

The drug-related death on June 5, 2002 of punk rock legend Dee Dee Ramone in his Hollywood apartment was another sad but common statistic from long-term substance abuse. 

A heroin user since the age of 15, Dee Dee, who died at 49, told a reporter in 1998, "Heroin is a cunning and insidious disease.  It will trick you any way it can".

A study from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, released in March 2002, reports that Los Angeles has the nation's highest drug-related deaths -- 1,192 of them in the year 2000 alone (the most recent annual statistics available).  Heroin, cocaine and alcohol accounted for 40% of the deaths, mostly in individuals age 25 or above.  And like Dee Dee Ramone and many others before him, most if not all of those who die from drugs started their abuse and addiction early.

Currently, every year in the United States, over 2.9 million people start using illegal drugs, the vast majority of them children. If only 10 percent of them reach a point of needing professional help, simple math demonstrates that there are nowhere near enough resources to do the job.  And even for those who do make it to packed rehab programs, the results are seldom lasting, and a true cure is rare.

It is facts like these that drive Tony Bylsma, the director of drug education and prevention for the Narconon drug rehabilitation program, to reach out to more and more children in the greater Los Angeles area each year.  Using drug education lectures that have been refined over the past 23 years, Bylsma and other lecturers are proving that with a solid education in drugs, kids can make sane and sensible decisions about drugs that will keep them from abusing.

"You're the first person that actually made me think and see the real side of drugs," said one LA high school student after a Narconon drug education lecture.  You're not like all the other people who I've heard speak.  They all say, 'Don't do drugs.  Drugs are bad., But you said, 'Make your own decisions.' For the first time ever I listened.',

"I don't think that 'e', Ecstasy, is a good idea anymore," wrote a student from Cleveland High School.  "I will always have (the lecture] in the back of my mind."

School administrators and teachers have also noted the difference, at times remarkable, in students after the lectures.

"The students in his [Bylsma's] classes universally reported that they had, in fact, definitely learned things that they had not previously known," said one Los Angeles school principal.  "He was not viewed as another adult lecturing' and several students reported a desire to give up their drug use, or reaffirmed their commitment not to use."

Narconon lectures are used in classrooms in other U.S. cities, including New England, where the leading drug education specialist in the Narconon network, Bobby Wiggins, has reached hundreds of thousands of students.

Reduction of drug use of as much as 70 percent has been reported in some schools as  a result of the Narconon drug education lectures.  In response to demand, Wiggins has trained up scores of other lecturers, like Bylsma, and recorded his own lectures onto video.  The drug education program has now  reached close to a million students.

Education versus Fear

Narconon's drug education draws on a vast amount of experience and knowledge.  The Narconon drug rehabilitation program, which uses exclusively the research and discoveries of L. Ron Hubbard, is validated internationally by drug experts and supported by governments in several countries its success rate: an average of 70 percent of students who complete the program never return to drugs.  Started in 1966, Narconon has helped tens of thousands of people to overcome addiction and dependency. 

Though the program is independent and not religious in nature, it is supported by Churches of Scientology and Scientologists world wide -- a 100 percent drug-free community of millions -- for its results.

 Narconon undertook broad drug education in the 1970s, after observing that most attempts at prevention have little to do with education, but more with fear.  "Education" also tends to convey that children and adolescents are not yet responsible enough to make good decisions where drugs are concerned.  Thus in many cases, it consists of grotesque pictures of burned-out, shriveled lungs, or arms torn up by needles.

 According to Bylsma, there is a huge liability in trying to influence kids away from drugs in this manner.

"When they finally meet someone who's using a drug they heard horror stories about, and he doesn't look anything like the pictures, it tends to invalidate all warnings," he said.

Most past drug education approaches, he said, tried to instill an idea or thought into the child's consciousness -with or without his consent -- to motivate him to act in a desired way.

"It's the same principle used in advertising. There's a trend of not even talking about the product, but just showing it in a way that is supposed to motivate the audience to go buy it," Bylsma said.  "When Brittany Spears sells Pepsi to the masses, she never once says that it tastes better than the competition, nor that it is cheaper or better for you.  She just holds the can up, dances around it and makes sure that you see how good it looks in her hand.  A can of 7-UP would look just as good, or even motor oil."

Today, attempts to instill images against drugs into young minds are overpowered by the massive promotion and advertising that occurs for drug products in every medium.  Drugs are in the classrooms, as well as in the medicine cabinets at home.  They pervade all forms of media -- so much so that a child can hardly watch TV or flip through a magazine for more than a few minutes without being told how to relieve aches, indigestion, obesity and depression with drugs.  

Bylsma said that an anti-drug message that tries to use the same tactics in the onslaught of pro-drug messages in society gets lost.  Further, drug advertising attaches itself to images of fun, or being able to perform well in life.  The anti-drug messages attach to images of fear, decay and damage.

"Which would kids rather pay attention to?" said Bylsma, who noted that kids also get unnerved when programs use fear, as they resent the attempt to make their decision for them.  It also spurs some to rebel and go the other direction. 

Such outcomes have led to the belief by many that drug prevention and education is ineffective in stemming the tide of drug abuse.  

"Only ineffective education gets an ineffective result," Bylsma said.

 Drawing on Experience  

In 1979, two of Narconon's staff in Los Angeles determined that the only viable, long-term answer to the drug trend was education and prevention.  They drew on the extensive experience of Narconon executives and counselors, and sifted through all the worthwhile references on drugs that they could find, including all the writings of L. Ron Hubbard on the subject. 

From there they developed a drug education program like no other, then as well as now.

Narconon drug education takes a unique approach.  It recognizes that students are already being covertly convinced to consume drugs, through various channels in society. And it presumes that students are capable of rational, independent decisions.  Each lecture begins with a clear message to the students that the purpose of the talk is education, and the decision making is up to them.

After first developing the program in 1979, Narconon executives sent a letter out to all LA area schools.  They got back 200 responses, and from that point, they began delivering 300 to 500 drug education lectures per year.

In January 1981, Narconon in Los Angeles called and brought together the directors of other Narconon offices in the United States for a seminar on how to deliver effective drug education to children.

Tony Bylsma was director of Narconon St. Louis at the time, and was one of those called.  He came to LA, learned the drug education program and took it home.  Using what he knew over the next few years, he delivered drug education lectures to more than 100,000 people, the majority of those students.  After a long hiatus, in 1999 he again determined to approach the drug problem from the standpoint of education and this time, he would make it his mainline career.

In 2000, after training in Boston under today's leading Narconon drug education expert, Bobby Wiggins, Bylsma moved to Los Angeles and established Narconon Drug Prevention and Education. 

He and program director Sigal Adini now work out of a storefront office in Glendale, arranging and delivering lectures at Southland schools.  They reach an average of 300 students, mostly high school,  each week. Bylsma spends most of his weekdays at the schools, while Adini handles the promotion and scheduling and also delivers some of the talks.  Bylsma sometimes calls on another veteran Narconon speaker from the Narconon center in Newport Beach, Gerry Marshall, to meet demand.  To reach even more youth, the lectures have been videotaped by an associated group, Friends of Narconon, and are distributed nationwide.

Bylsma and Marshall both are capable of delivering the talks to high schools, middle schools and grade schools, adjusting the presentation and examples to fit the age group.  In some schools an assembly is called and they may speak to all or most of the student body at the same time.  In others they speak to one or two classes at a time and often spend the full day at the school giving a different talk at each class period.

Program Details

Over the years the program has been augmented and refined based on survey results from students.

It includes a number of different lectures focusing on different aspects of drug abuse -- effects on the body, the mind, the individual himself and his life and future, as well as lectures on specific drugs such as marijuana, ecstasy and LSD.  One lecture is on drugs and alcohol in the media, and another is on achieving goals -- which, in addition to demonstrating drugs, ills effects on life achievement, provides the students with tools to help them set and achieve their aims. 

"An important part of drug education is to let students know that there are other and better tools than drugs for handling life and getting some respite from it," Bylsma said.

Each lecture opens with some ground rules. "I'm not going to tell you what to do and I'm not going to try to scare you," Bylsma tells them.  He also tells them he won't treat them like little kids or give them cute little sayings to use, like "Just say 'no."'

The educational part of each talk begins with the definition of a drug: A drug is any substance you put in the body that is not a food and that changes the way the body or the mind is working.  He explains, per the researches of L. Ron Hubbard, how all drugs are essentially poisons, whether cocaine, alcohol, ecstasy, coffee or any other drug.

The body's first response to a poison is to speed up and try to get rid of it.  Thus the first effect of a small amount of any drug is to act as a stimulant.  If more of the drug is consumed, it begins to act as a depressant.  The body begins to be overwhelmed and slows down to try to minimize the effect of the poison.  If still more of the drug is consumed the depressant effect can lead to a coma and eventually to the third physical response, which is death.

Building from these basics, the lectures differ, depending on whether he is addressing their effect on the body, the mind or the individual himself.

If he is giving talks to several different classes at the same school, he'll try to give a different talk to each class.  The students talk about it to each other, he says, and by giving several different talks he leaves as much information with them as possible.

Depending on which lecture he is giving he'll back it up with stories from his own personal experience.  Having gotten off drugs through Narconon  himself, and having worked with the program for many years, he has plenty of them.

After each lecture, students routinely have questions, and Bylsma stays to answer them. He is frequently asked to stay and continue talking or answering questions after a class period is over.  He recalls one time after a lecture went particularly long, an impressed teacher told him, "They chased out the last guest speaker after about 20 minutes."

His talks generate so much interest that it is not unusual for students to give up a break to stay and hear more, or to ask questions.

"Kids are in mystery to some degree about drugs.  You fill in the blanks, and they're very interested.    And if a kid understands something, he's less likely to have to experiment with it to know what it is," Bylsma said.

"Once again, you have 'wowed' the students with your very powerful presentation about the dangers of drug use," wrote a school counselor in an assessment of Bylsma’s lectures.  "During each of your talks, I was impressed with how attentive the classes were -- at times I could even hear the proverbial pin dropping.  The details you provide, humor you interject and the personal story you share have a very profound effect on our young people.,,

In a number of cases, the lectures have helped students caught in the dilemma of having family members, even parents, who take drugs.  "These kids have a particularly confusing time of it, trying to sort out right from wrong.  Learning facts about drugs and drug use helps them to understand, to sort that out," said Bylsma.

 Results

After each lecture, the students are given a survey, to be filled out anonymously, asking what they thought of the lecture, whether it changed the way they think about drugs and how they can use what they learned.  Almost one for one they say their thoughts about drugs changed from the lecture.

Teachers, counselors and school administrators are also asked for their review, and routinely give high p raise for the lectures.  “I, personally, was very moved by the presentation.  I also learned new information along with our students," said one Los Angeles school principal.  "I believe, after hearing the presentation myself, that this program can truly save lives as well as help people make decisions that will lead them towards productive lives.”

As Bylsma describes it, "Instead of concentrating on 'stopping' drug abuse, the Narconon drug education program puts children into control as far as drugs are concerned. Children and teenagers are quite capable of understanding and making their own sensible, informed decisions."

Narconon's plan is to keep going until they are reaching all of the Southland schools and, nationally, the 2.9 million children that have been starting on drugs each year.

"Bit by bit, we're chipping away at the drug culture. We're aiming toward a point when the entire society can say 'know to drugs,"' concludes Bylsma.  "It's the only way we are ever going to change the trend.  It's the only way that's ever going to happen.”