What is the Real Natural Disaster?

The body count for Hurricane Katrina surpassed the 1000 mark.

It has been said that the Katrina disaster will cost billions of dollars to sort out.

In the end it is the American public that will have to foot this bill for a disaster brought upon us by Mother Nature.

Events like this seem to overshadow the true largest disaster in our society. What do you think that is?

Each year an estimated $107 billion in overall productivity losses is attributable to alcohol abuse, and $69.4 billion is attributable to drug abuse.

More than 132,000 deaths annually are attributable to alcohol and drug abuse.

The estimated loss of productivity resulting from these deaths is about $45.9 billion, including $31.3 billion for the 107,000 premature deaths attributable to alcohol abuse and $14.6 billion for the 25,000 deaths attributable to drug abuse. (Source: National Institute on Drug Abuse)

These are annual statistics. As you can see this is a much larger social disaster than what Mother Nature is dolling out to us.

Yet the media is reporting that the costs to handle the Katrina disaster could be well above the 50 billion dollar mark. Let's do some math here.

It is costing Americans over 170 billion dollars a year because of the drug and alcohol problem, yet this year's Federal Budget for handling of the drug problem is only 12 billion (per Office of National Drug Control Policy).

And when you break this budget down only 3.5 billion dollars is going to prevention and education services and only 233 million is allocated to the Department of Education. Yet the drug problem is clearly the largest disaster going on in our society today. Ok, so what can we do about it?

Believe it or not, there was one right thing I heard from the media: The fastest and most effective help in the Katrina disaster came from the private sector.

That's right, in times of real need it is the American people, the individuals themselves, that rally to the cause to help their fellow man. To me that is the most inspiring glimmer of hope we have for our society. Knowing that people really do care and want to help.

Friends of Narconon is addressing this social disaster directly at the root--our public schools.

By getting the truth about drugs to our youth across the nation, we are able to significantly cut down the future demand for drugs.

And if you ask me, that is a very powerful way of avoiding an even larger disaster in the future.

Think about it: Who is going to be running this country in the future? It is what we do today, right now, that will keep millions of kids from turning to drugs. Now is the time to help, not when it is too late!

Sincerely,
Robert Hernandez, CCDC*
President, Friends of Narconon, Intl.

(Certified Chemical Dependency Counselor)

PS: If you would like to become part of history, there is still time to help with the next phase of our video production and get your name in the movies! Contact Donna Miller at 1-800-882-6862 for more details.