Hundreds receive drug education at Mountainair Sunflower Festival.

Local residents and visitors from central New Mexico flocked to Mountainair last week to enjoy the annual Sunflower Festival—an art festival for the entire family. Manzano Mountain Art Council sponsors the weekend that features live music, arts and crafts, a juried art show, great food, and plenty of children’s activities. 

To ensure the young people get off to the best possible start in life, volunteers from the Church of Scientology Albuquerque brought their Truth About Drugs campaign to the festival. 

According to a nationwide survey of high school students, New Mexico youths report some of the highest rates of drug use across a broad range of illegal substances. So the Truth About Drugs volunteers attend festivals, fairs and other family events to help youngsters get the information they need to make their own informed decisions about drug use. 

The volunteers handed out youth-friendly, factual booklets about alcohol and drugs and copies of the award-winning documentary, The Truth About Drugs: Real People, Real Stories, which features the personal stories of young people who talk about how they were hooked on drugs and the dire consequences they experienced.

These materials are published and distributed by Foundation for a Drug-Free World, a nonprofit organization that empowers youth and adults with the facts about the most commonly abused substances.

The Foundation’s popular Truth About Drugs booklets teach readers about the short-term and long-term effects of drugs, what they are made of and what users themselves experience. The booklets address alcohol, marijuana, crystal meth, heroin, cocaine, inhalants, LSD, Ritalin, painkillers, prescription drugs, synthetic drugs, crack and ecstasy.

Effective with youth and adults, these materials are used by community groups, schools and professionals. The Truth About Drugs program includes a complete drug education kit with curriculum, online courses as well as the feature-length documentary and brief public service announcements that dispel the pro-drug lies people are told about drugs.

The Church of Scientology and Scientologists support the Truth About Drugs campaign and make these materials available free of charge to anyone wishing to use them to handle the drug-abuse epidemic. After extensive social research, author, humanitarian and Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard called drugs “the single most destructive element present in our current culture.” 

For more information, visit the Drug-Free World website or Scientology website.