By Tony Zizza, Georgia Vice-President, Parents for Label and Drug-Free Education
Now that another school year is upon us, what do hurried mornings and the like really mean for our children? Quickie hugs and kisses before dashing off to the bus stop. Reminders to study again for the Science test. Promises to be picked up on time from band practice.
This is typical stuff. Unfortunately, school mornings in America 2003 also mean doses of dangerous psychotropic drugs for our children. Their brains are still growing, but the "legal drugging" runs rampant.
I'd like to know how we got to the point in our advanced culture where we drug millions of children to combat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) when this alleged disorder has no medical validity whatsoever.
ADHD is entirely subjective. It has made billions in profits for the makers of drugs such as Ritalin, Concerta, and others.
Someone please explain to me how children can spend summers and weekends concentrating on their jobs and mastering complex video games, but come the arrival of homework and tests—out comes the prescription for mind altering drugs to assist in the "treatment" of ADHD. Something isn't adding up right.
What if we were to learn that ADHD doesn't really exist? That for decades we've been drugging our children at the insistence of the mental health profession? That there is something fundamentally shady with the makers of Concerta giving away over $250,000 in this year's "I See Success" ADHD scholarship contest to students between the ages of 6-18?
Where is the outrage? Zero tolerance seems to apply to petty offenses on school grounds. Drug free zone signs and Red Ribbon Week campaigns are everywhere, but where's the outrage when children are drugged because they don't know how to read? Disgusting. Disgusting because ADHD is fraudulent.
I agree with Dr. Fred A. Baughman, Jr, a board certified child neurologist and Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology, who said, "In calling ADHD an abnormality/disease, without scientific facts, the psychiatrist knowingly lies, and violates the informed consent rights of both patient and parents. This is de facto medical malpractice."
Doesn't it bother anyone that ADHD is in fact good business, but bad medicine? That children have actually died from the use of Ritalin? That organizations such as Children and Adults With Attention Deficit Disorder (CHADD) receive funding from the makers of Ritalin? That children are prescribed amphetamine-like drugs because their ADHD symptoms have made them do the unthinkable: "Be easily distracted. Not listen when spoken to directly. Interrupt others."
Interestingly, pharmaceutical companies who profit from ADHD made 600 million dollars from drugs to "treat" ADHD in 2001. Again, since ADHD doesn't really exist, shouldn't we be fighting an entirely different War on Drugs?
Let's get back to basics. Let's embrace life's challenges instead of wishing them away with psychiatric drugs.
Our children deserve better.
