and the Island is forced to spend millions on treatments.

This was the warning sounded by the founder of a New York drug rehabilitation farm yesterday.

Mr. Logan Lewis, president of the Apple Agency in Long Island and Queens, will be one of four guest speakers at a drug rehabilitation seminar sponsored by the National Drug Commission, Bank of Bermuda, and Bacardi International in conjunction with a group of religious and lay people calling themselves Action.

The four-day seminar, which began last night at Bermuda College's Stonington campus, will also feature Mr. Thomas Jackson of The Missionary Education and Evangelistic Training Ministry in Tennessee, director of Lincoln Clinic for Substance Abuse in New York Dr. Michael Smith, and president of "Operation Push'' the Rev. Jim Daniels.

Speaking with The Royal Gazette yesterday, Mr. Lewis said Bermuda had a lot in common with Long Island -- a "small rural community with a relatively small drug problem''.

"The lifestyles here and in Long Island are much the same but the problem has not escalated here to the point where it is a major concern for the community at large.'' he said.

"The aim of this workshop is to see in what way we can give Bermudians the benefit of our experience.'' Once a heroin addict himself, Mr. Lewis said he has been working with substance abusers and the mentally ill for the past 25 years and recently with AIDS patients.

Mr. Lewis said that many did not believe there was a cure for drug addiction which was why many did not recover.

"I am proof that there is a solution to the drug problem. After going in and out of prisons I went back to school and got my Masters in Social Work and I never looked back. I have been helping people ever since.'' Mr. Jackson, a Christian health educator who said he has also had his share of substance abuse, chose to approach the drug problem from spiritual, mental and physical directions.

A former basketball player who suffered from arthritis, Mr. Jackson said he eventually began using drugs to deal with the physical and psychological symptoms of his pain.

He and his wife began their ministry 18 years ago in search of a cure for his problems.

"Our home centre is in Tennessee but we travel around the country taking the treatment to thousands,'' Mr. Thomas said.

"We have gone into people's homes and helped them by giving a thorough detoxification programme designed to bring people around and make them aware of their surroundings enough to seek long-term treatment.'' The programme, he explained, involved health classes, stress classes and cooking classes to help people better understand how the body works.

"We believe that what people eat has a lot to do with their craving for drugs and alcohol,'' Mr. Jackson said.

Using a totally different approach to dealing with the cravings bought on by chemical abuse, Dr. Michael Smith said his clinic used acupuncture to help relieve the withdrawal symptoms, cravings and panic produced by drugs.

"Many are skeptical about acupuncture but once they have seen it done first hand they seem to respond to it,'' he said.

Mr. Smith was scheduled to conduct a series of workshops at Addiction Services and at Montrose Substance Abuse Centre to show counsellors how to perform the treatments.

The treatments, he explained, worked well with cocaine abusers who respond to them because of the lack of pharmaceutical drugs available to relieve the cravings of cocaine addiction.

There are 500 acupuncture programmes in different parts of the US with 80 in New York alone, he said.

"We have trained over 3,000 people from all over the country,'' Mr. Smith added. "We have helped mentally ill people as well as drug addicted people.'' He also stressed that people should receive treatment while remaining in their own residential areas because those were the places where they used the drugs.

"We believe that it is better to help people in their own environment,'' he said.