Dutch put Narconon on Warning

Dutch officials have put Narconon on warning that they are under “enhanced supervision” – and could even face closure – after spot checks raised concerns about patient safety.¹

Narconon: put
on warning

Dutch health officials have put Narconon under six months of special monitoring because of concerns about patient safety, warning them they could face closure if they fail to make improvements.

The Heath Care Inspectorate (IGZ) announced its decision in a statement posted on its website Monday, after a series of spot checks on Narconon's operation raised the alarm.

Two unannounced visits early this year by the officers from the Health Care Inspectorate (IGZ) turned up deficiences that a subsequent inspection in May revealed had not been corrected.

So the IGZ has imposed the following restrictions:

• Six months of supervision, which may be extended;
• a ban on admitting drug addicts and people with serious psychological and psychiatric problems;
• all new admissions must first be examined by a doctor (and Narconon has to provide documentation to that effect)

Earlier this week, the Inspectorate posted a copy of a letter it wrote on May 24 to the director of Narconon Netherlands, Joanna Kluessien, in which it set out these restrictions.

The one-month delay in making this decision public was because Narconon had tried to block its publication, as the letter itself makes clear.

The supervision ruling and the restrictions that go with it were made after surprise inspections in February and March of this year, at the Narconon centre in Zutphen, about 30 kilometres (20 miles) northeast of Arnhem.

These inspections had themselves been prompted by anonymous complaints about Narconon which the Inspectorate had received in the previous year.

After its first two inspections, the IGZ drew up a list of changes it wanted made and delivered its report to Narconon in April. The release does not make it clear, but these appear to have involved restrictions on the kind of work Narconon is permitted to do.

The IGZ carried out a third surprise inspection on May 16 to see if Narconon was respecting the terms it had imposed: and concluded that it was not.

As the inspector's letter noted, Narconon tried to defend its position in a response sent on May 21.

Narconon's understanding of the restrictions placed on them in the April report had been that they could not treat patients suffering from physical withdrawal symptoms.

There was a disagreement over a patient admitted on May 15 suffering from a cocaine addiction.

Narconon did not think that someone who had recently been taking the drug qualified as the kind of patient they were not allowed to treat because – according to them – cocaine addiction did not involve physical withdrawal symptoms.

The letter also seems to suggest that Narconon has been ordered to hand in its WTZi certification: its authorisation to function as a care institution offering services covered by Dutch health insurance. Narconon had not been quick enough complying with the agency's instructions, said the IGZ letter.

With its accreditation pulled, it can no longer receive health insurance payments for the services it offers.²

The IGZ said that it was imposing the six-month period of enhanced surveillance in part because of the results of the May 16 inspection, which had revealed Narconon's failure to respect the restrictions imposed earlier.

As the IGZ press release put it, they had doubts about the “willingness and ability” of Narconon to comply with the terms it had set out.

The more intense supervision, again using spot checks rather than preplanned visits, is to ensure that this time, Narconon does as it is told.

But in its letter to Narconon the Inspectorate made it clear that if the situation did not improve in the coming months it would consider recommending its closure to the Health Minister Edith Schippers.

If there are still dangers for the health of your patients during or after the period of six months, than the Inspectorate will consider advising the Minister to issue an instructive measure or another corrective action available under the Health Institutions Quality Act.

In this context, that could very well mean closing Narconon down in the Netherlands.

Dutch Suppressive Guy

One of those who contacted the IGZ to express concern about Narconon's operation in the Netherlands was someone who we'll call Dutch Suppressive Guy.

DSG has posted anonymously on some of the message boards and follows developments closely.

He has put together a Dutch-language website – and the title alone suggests he does not mince his words: Scam of Scientology: een portret van een waardeloze organisatie (portrait of a worthless organisation).

In 2012 and 2013, DSG made six complaints about Narconon to the Dutch regulatory authorities, complete with a substantial amount of supporting material.

He has been good enough to forward them to Infinite Complacency and among the issues he raised, were the following:

• Narconon's relationship with Scientology

As I have argued elsewhere on this site, Narconon does not just have a relationship to Scientology, it is entirely subordinate to the movement and used both as a source of income and of recruits.³

• the dangerously large doses of Niacin (AKA Vitamin B3, Nicotinic Acid) used at Narconon “New Life Detoxification Program”

Narconon's detox programme is no more than the secular version of Scientology's Purification Rundown, developed by the movement's founder, L. Ron Hubbard.

When Scientology runs the Rundown, they describe it simply as a process of spiritual cleansing; when Narconon runs the Detox however, they say it is a process that has proven therapeutic benefits.

The dangers of taking such massive doses of Niacin were spelled out at the 2009 fraud trial of Scientology in Paris, where several defendants were convicted for the illegal practice of pharmacy.

Olivier Saumon, lawyer for France's Order of Pharmacists, plaintiffs in the case, pointed out in his summing up that the maximum recommended dose of niacin, was 54 mg: yet Hubbard had recommended taking between 100 and 5,000 mg a day during the Rundown.

He noted too that Scientologists interpreted the dangerous side effects described by the court-appointed experts as evidence that the process was working.

“Sometimes the symptoms created – in particular by niacin – are seen as being beneficial rather than considered as being one of the dangerous effects of niacin,” he observed.

Such thinking of course, has its roots in Hubbard's insistence that “the way out is the way through” and that participants should stick with the process no matter how hard it gets.⁴

• The closure of a Narconon centre in Canada and the deaths in several US centres

DSG provided information on the closure of Trois-Rivières Narcon in Quebec, Canada after a campaign by former patient-turned-staff-member David Love.

He also informed them of the deaths at Narconon Oklahoma in the United States.

And in a later communication, DSG updated them about the sanctions handed out to Narconon Georgia for their obstruction and deceit as they tried to fend off a wrongful death lawsuit over the death of Patrick Desmond.

As reported by Tony Ortega at The Underground Bunker, Judge Stacey Hydrick sanctioned them for “...repeatedly and wilfully obstructed the discovery process both by failures to respond fully to legitimate discovery requests and, even more egregiously, by false responses”.⁵

DSG's point this time was that this kind of deception was not an isolated case in Scientology.

To illustrate his point he provided them with the killer quote from Hubbard: “THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN CONTROL PEOPLE IS TO LIE TO THEM. You can write that down in your book in great big letters.”⁶

All of which leads us nicely to:

• Inflated success claims of Narconon's efficacy

DSG pointed out that while Narconon International claimed a success rate of 75 percent, a 2008 Norwegian health ministry study had reached a different conclusion.

It stated:

There is currently no reliable evidence for the effectiveness of Narconon as a primary or secondary drug prevention program. To the extent our extensive database search could determine, no randomized controlled trials about the program have been conducted...⁷

He also tipped them off to a leaked document from Narconon International's legal affairs officer Claudia Arcabascio, which Tony Ortega revealed earlier this year.

In it Arcabascio wrote that Narconon needed to drop the claim of a 70-percent success rate as “we do not have scientific evidence of it”.

As Ortega put it in his report: “As smoking guns go, this one is high caliber and billowing.”

In fact, Arcabascio got her figures wrong. Narconon is claiming not 70 percent, but a 75-percent success rate – and while it may not be on the front page, it is still posted at their site.

It was at about this point – April 2013 – that DSG suggested they should themselves be checking in at Tony Ortega's The Underground Bunker for regular exposés of Narconon's activities.

By now, as he confessed to Infinite Complacency, an exasperated tone was creeping into his correspondence because he did not think the Inspectorate was taking him seriously.⁸

What he did not know was that the wheels were already in motion: at the time he wrote his letter, in early April, the ISG had already made two surprise visits to Narconon.

Narconon on probation

From the details provided at the IGZ website, “enhanced supervision” appears to be moving towards the upper range of measures available to the agency. Here is how the IGZ explains it:

“Enhanced supervision” is a more stringent corrective measure. The Inspectorate will impose corrective measures if there is a higher-than-average risk of failure to provide responsible care, provided that risk is not so great or immediate as to preclude the health care provider taking appropriate remedial action within a reasonable period.

The agency also says:

The inspectorate will usually impose enhanced supervision if an improvement plan has yielded insufficient results or if there is little confidence that the health care provider will be able to achieve the desired results otherwise.

This certainly appears to be what has happened here.

It is still not clear what aspects of Narconon's operations set off alarm bells at the agency. I have put in two requests for clarification to the Inspectorate but I am still waiting to hear back from them.

The IGZ's letter makes it clear it reserves the right to extend its surveillance and if necessary take the matter to the Dutch Health Minister, Edith Schippers with a view to harsher sanctions.

Narconon is on probation then.

The question is, can they actually clean up their act without abandoning Hubbard's system?

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1  This piece is an extended version of the one published on June 26 at Tony Ortega's site The Underground Bunker.

2  But in any case, this would only apply to Dutch clients and some of their intake, perhaps even most of it, comes from abroad.

3  For more on Narconon's role inside the Scientology movement, see both “Narconon: an Introduction” and “Narconon is Casualty Contact” elsewhere on this site.

4  For more on this, with the relevant Hubbard references, see “...for the Pharmacists”, my account of Saumon's closing arguments in the 2009 Paris trial, elsewhere on this site. DSG even provided the inspectors with a link to my review of the original judgment in the case (confirmed on appeal). His point was that inspectors from France's health products watchdog the AFSSAPS had testified as expert witnesses as to the dangers of the Purification Rundown during the Paris trial.

5  See Tony Ortega's write-up at The Underground Bunker: “SHOCKER: Court Punishes Scientology For Acting Like…Scientology”. Of course anyone who has been following developments at The Underground Bunker will know that that is only the tip of the iceberg.

6  From Hubbard's “Technique 88” up at Dutch writer and campaigner Karin Spaink's website. Veterans of the Scientology beat will know that she fought a long, bruising, but ultimately successful legal battle from the mid-90s with Scientology over her summary of the movement's upper levels. My thanks to her for helping me with the Dutch texts cited in this article.

7  “A brief summary and evaluation evidence base for Narconon prevention intervention”, a 2008 report commissioned by the Norwegian Health Directorate. The quote is from page 16 of the document.

8  An additional complication, says DSG, was that he was not receiving regular updates from them as he had chosen to remain an anonymous complainant.