Drug Rehabilitation Ministries

During the late '70s and early '80s, while Spain was liberalising many aspects of its life, an unwanted side-effect was a great inflow of narcotic drugs from North Africa and Latin America. This caused many young people to end up in a real mess. At first, the main hard drug was heroin, later this became cocaine and more recently artificial stimulants such as Exstasy have dominated the headlines.

Into this situation, some of the evangelical church leaders saw the need for the establishment of ministries to reach out and save these young people. Centres were established by Remar, in fact a grouping of several initial efforts, together with Reto (inspired by David Wilkerson) and Betel, a minsitry of WEC International. These three have also expanded internationally. Other smaller ministries, such as ECMI's Good Samaritan in Córdoba, have also been established.

These ministries have seen many young people saved before an early HIV positive death. Others have made a complete recovery. This is one of the greatest success stories of the Spanish churches and the Lord must be praised for this.

On Thursday 19th June, over 25 tonnes of Hashish were found in a truck coming from Marrocco and on Thursday 22nd May, 150 kilos of Cocaine were discovered in the port of Valencia; on Tuesday, 27th May, 294 kilos were found in a 15 tonne granite block in Catalonia, having travelled from Ecuador via Antwerp and France. All this shows once again that the battle to stop this harmful trade remains significant.

A government report, pre-released 28th May, shows that since 1996 the treatment by the health services of cocaine sufferers has cuadrupled, to become over one third of all treatment of drug takers. Synthetics, such as Extasy, are also on the increase.

Evidently, much remains to be done and the current atmosphere of hopelessness among young Europeans certainly extends to Spaniards and draws them to alcohol, drugs and other 'experiences' to fill the void of a meaningless life. Pray on for the Lord's blessing on these ministries.

A particular need for these ministries is legal recognition of all their centres. This is difficult, since the law requires a good number of trained professionals, doctors, social workers and psychologists among others. Until five years ago, almost all the workers at the centres were themselves rehabilitated addicts, whose academic abilities were not always the greatest, particularly after taking into account the long-term effects of the drug abuse. But the Lord is gradually answering. Nevertheless, it is difficult to ask the few Spanish academically bright evangelicals to train up as doctors and other professionals and then leave behind the opportunity to earn a good living and move into this or any other area of social action outreach. And the churches mostly want to extend this kind of activity to all kinds of new areas: immigrants, battered wives, down-and-outs, etc..

Links (in Spanish):

Betel

REMAR

RETO

Links updated 29/10/07