From http://www.inksyndicate.com/

1.28.2003

$200 million for religious-based drug treatment? "Our nation must recognize that if we can change a heart, we're more than likely to change someone's habits and addiction on drugs and alcohol," says the President.

Some people who have already recognized this are Narconon, the Scientology front group that gets many of its glassy-eyed recruits through faith-based rehab. For a while there was also Synanon , California's violent, abusive cult of drug rehab that inspired Phillip Dick's "A Scanner Darkly."

Synanon relied on pencil sales to fuel its "encounter groups," which involved consensual hallucination sessions, Ouijia boards, and worship of a guy named Charles Dederich. It became best-known for putting rattlesnakes in people's mailboxes. Alas, Synanon has gone bankrupt;

it was before its time. Nowadays, it could apply for federal money, demonstrating its high success ratio -- if the government's definition of "success" doesn't have anything to do with standing outside of Barnes & Noble with a vacant grin trying to get people to take a personality test.

Cults are loving this administration.

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