While the Scientology-backed CCHR is fighting to keep schools from endorsing therapeutic drugs, supporters of another Scientology-backed program called Narconon are venturing into schools to lecture kids on recreational drugs. The book "What Is Scientology?" boasts that Narconon representatives gave nearly 10,000 free lectures on drug prevention to approximately 1 million students in the '80s and '90s. In the last decade, the programs reached over 1.7 million kids around the country, Narconon officials have said.

According to the Scientology handbook, "Answers to Drugs," the core treatment for those who abuse drugs like marijuana, Ecstasy or cocaine is sweating out drug residuals and other toxins by taking saunas and jogging. Remedies also include the B-complex vitamin niacin, oils and other minerals, a detoxification service which "is available under expert supervision in Scientology organizations and missions around the world."

In the past year, thanks in part to a series of articles by Nanette Asimov in the San Francisco Chronicle, city officials and school districts in California have taken a closer look at the Narconon curriculum. In a letter to the San Francisco Unified School District, Steve Heilig, director of health and education for the San Francisco Medical Society, wrote: "One of our reviewers opined that 'this [curriculum] reads like a high school science paper pieced together from the Internet, and not very well at that.'"

A study by the California Healthy Kids Research Center for the California Department of Education established that Narconon imparts inaccurate information. Narconon's discredited teachings include the pronouncements that drugs burn up the body's vitamins and minerals, that these vitamin deficiencies cause pain (which prompts more drug use), that rapid vitamin and nutrient losses cause the "munchies" among pot smokers, and that drugs build up in fat tissue and spur flashbacks and a hunger for more drugs.

"This theoretical information does not reflect current evidence that is widely accepted and recognized as medically and scientifically accurate," the study found. This February, the California State Superintendent recommended a ban on Narconon in California schools, and San Francisco and Los Angeles school districts have indeed outlawed Narconon.

Despite the setbacks, CCHR and Narconon continue to promote their programs in state legislatures, schools and the public eye. Ultimately, say Scientology critics, the message is not about medicine or science, which Scientology members consistently dismiss, but the church's messianic fervor to spread its religion.

"Their goal is to take over entirely the field of mental health," says Mark Plummer, a former member of Scientology for 14 years, including eight years in the Sea Organization, what Plummer calls an elite core group within Scientology. "Their beliefs stem from Hubbard's dogma that psychiatry is evil. Scientology teaches that psychiatry views people as 'meat bodies' without a spiritual aspect, and that Scientologists alone should be allowed to treat mental illnesses."

Cult watchdog and longtime Scientology foe Rick Ross agrees. "Basically, Hubbard designed Scientology to be the ultimate, if not only way, to address mental health problems," he says. "So psychiatrists, psychologists and counselors associated with mental health are anathema to a Scientologist because Hubbard said so. Psychiatry is outside of the practice of Scientology and the services that it sells."

But you don't have to rely on critics to show that Scientology's attack on psychiatry is part of the church's crusade to rule society. In 1995, David Miscavige, the church's current leader, addressed the International Association of Scientologists in Copenhagen. He told the faithful that the church had two goals as the new millennium approached, dutifully noted by International Scientology News: "Objective one - place Scientology at the absolute center of society. Objective two - eliminate psychiatry in all its forms."

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