STEALING, DEALING AND RITALIN ADULTS AND STUDENTS ARE INVOLVED IN ABUSE OF DRUG

Last month, the former principal of an Orem, Utah, elementary school began
a 30-day jail sentence for replacing students' Ritalin with sugar pills,
and the man who has stepped in for him prays that the embarrassing buzz can
be quieted and the community can return to a focus on academics.

But as abuses of Ritalin and other drugs used to calm and focus children
with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) become more common,
that may prove difficult.

Drug thefts from school offices are being reported and prosecuted with
increasing frequency, and students report a higher demand to trade or sell
their prescription pills between classes.

Those misuses are further fueled by a shift in drug treatment for children
with ADHD from the well-known stimulant Ritalin to amphetamines, a
stimulant with a long history of abuse.

The problem has grabbed Washington's attention. This week federal officials
will launch an investigation of public elementary and secondary schools to
address '' theft, illicit sale and any other manners of diversion and abuse
of these medications,'' according to a Sept. 12 letter from the House
Judiciary Committee to the General Accounting Office.

''Virtually every data source available confirms what the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration, state and local law enforcement, and various
media outlets have documented: widespread theft, diversion and abuse of
Ritalin and drugs like it, within public schools throughout the country,''
says Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., the committee's chairman. ''I am hopeful that
the GAO report will help us not only learn more about this problem, but
will also point us in the right direction as we in Congress consider ways
in which to address it.''

Those evaluations, which are expected to be completed by early next year
and will be conducted by a company that specializes in drugs used by
youths, also will examine how schools supervise student medications and the
level of training required to oversee children who have legitimate
prescriptions.

More than 19 million prescriptions for various drugs were filled in the
past year to treat ADHD, up from 11 million five years ago, according to
IMS Health, a research firm that follows the prescription drug industry.
Nearly all are for stimulants, which are strongly regulated, with quotas
that the DEA sets yearly based on medical need.

Since 1990, the DEA has increased by 650% the quota on production of
methylphenidate, sold under the familiar brand name Ritalin. Since 1993,
the quota on amphetamine has increased 3,750%. More than 80% of the
amphetamine use in the USA, according to the DEA, is for treatment of ADHD.

The medical community estimates that 3% to 5% of school-age children have
ADHD, characterized by inattentiveness, impulsiveness and sometimes
hyperactivity. Recent studies have found that up to 20% of students in some
schools are being treated for ADHD with stimulants, and because many
medications require several doses during the day, the drugs are being
monitored and dispensed by children themselves or by educators.

In Maine, more than half of all medicines handled by schools are stimulants
to treat ADHD, according to a study by state health care workers that asked
schools to list the medicines they gave to children on one day last year.
More than 6,000 Maine students lined up that day for ADHD medications.

'Diluted' educational process

Safeguards in place in Utah schools are among the nation's strictest, say
officials there. Drugs are locked up, and only two school employees, the
principal and a school nurse, have keys and dispense the drugs.

''The irony is, he was a very good principal,'' says Michael Robinson,
public information officer for the Alpine School District in Utah, where
the Ritalin-sugar swap was discovered.

Parents even lobbied to have the principal, Gerald Smith, stay on. Smith
confessed to stealing the drugs; a plea agreement to a misdemeanor charge
of theft included having his license rescinded for two years and the 30-day
jail sentence.

''The risk for having abuses for any activity is always there. Had we not
been organized about it, it could've been much worse,'' says Robinson, who
adds that Smith came forward after an investigation had started. ''But
we're not in the business of dispensing drugs. We're expected to handle all
kinds of things like this, and it's diluted the educational process.''

While no agency tracks incidents of theft at schools, anecdotal evidence is
growing:

* Police in Athens, Ga., are investigating two thefts this school year and
are preparing a report after interviewing school personnel. More than 100
pills were stolen from an elementary school during a burglary in October,
police say. Of more concern to officials are nearly 300 pills pilfered from
a locked office in another school during the current school year. Police
say students are not suspected in the thefts, and school employees
voluntarily took urine tests. No charges have been filed.

* A 52-year-old computer technician at a junior high school in Traverse
City, Mich., was caught on videotape stealing Ritalin from a locked cabinet
last year. Possession charges were dropped, and the 24-year school district
employee pleaded guilty to attempted larceny in a building and was
sentenced to 24 days in jail. He resigned.

* School officials in Indiana handled two incidents last year. An
elementary school sent letters to parents, asking for replacement
prescriptions, after ''many, many doses'' were found missing from a locked
cabinet. A nurse at another school was ordered into treatment and fined
$1,300 for stealing Ritalin, Adderall (an amphetamine blend) and a third
drug belonging to six students.

Going for the buzz

It's no surprise that adults are attracted to the stimulants, says
pharmacologist Gretchen Feussner of the DEA's Office of Diversion, which
oversees misuse and abuse of controlled drugs. Effects on adults who use
doses larger than those prescribed for children include euphoria, greater
energy and productivity, increased sexual appetite, and an overall feeling
of being a lot smarter.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse reported in late 1996 that adults in
Phoenix had been admitted to treatment programs for abusing drugs from
their children's prescriptions. Similar reports came from Boston. Also, a
Medicaid office in Missouri shut down a scam in which parents were using
their children to get prescriptions for Ritalin.

When the DEA investigated schools in three states in 1996, few had systems
in place for monitoring use of the drugs, Feussner says. The DEA also found
a handful of ''shocking'' instances of school employees stealing drugs,
including a principal in North Carolina who insisted on having copies of
students' prescriptions. He later was caught having those prescriptions
filled at 60 pharmacies.

This year the DEA will distribute brochures to schools, recommending safety
measures to avoid abuses by adults and students. ''They can't have 15
people overseeing'' the distribution and inventory of controlled drugs,
Feussner says.

DEA officials discovered kids passing out their medications on the way to
school and kids who ''palmed'' their medication (pretending to take it but
holding it in a hand) to give or sell to a classmate.

'Too darn available'

Many school officials told DEA investigators that school workers believed
that students in high school were mature enough to manage their own drug
regimens.

But adolescence is when many youths start experimenting with drug abuse,
Feussner says.

''It's just too darn available,'' she says. People ''think of it as a
medication and never worry about it as a drug of abuse. . . . Some would
say, 'If it's given to a 6-year-old, how bad can it be?' That kind of
thinking clouds the issue and makes them more careless.''

Ritalin abuse by kids has been on the DEA radar screen for more than five
years, with a growing body of evidence about youths who snort crushed pills
for recreational use or to enhance school performance. On the street, one
Ritalin tablet -- sometimes called ''Skittles'' or ''Smarties'' because the
pills, 5 to 20 milligrams each, come in pastel colors -- can fetch $2 to
$20, according to the DEA. At the pharmacy, each costs less than $1.

Two Illinois 14-year-olds told the NBC affiliate in Chicago this year that
they were offered $20 by other students for their Ritalin. The boys say
they transferred to a new school after being threatened by students who
wanted their ADHD medication. In a case pending in Nashua, N.H., two
students, ages 14 and 15, were charged with selling two Ritalin pills to
another student. They were attending summer school when police and school
officials were alerted.

Drug abuse is drug abuse

John Cepaitis, the school superintendent in Nashua, says that abuse of the
prescription drugs pales when compared with marijuana and alcohol abuse and
that this summer's incident is the only one in a year. But consequences are
the same for any student caught on campus with a drug: a 20-day suspension,
which can be reduced if the student agrees to complete a program of
drug-abuse counseling.

But other areas report growing abuses among younger children. Released last
month, a Massachusetts study of 6,000 public school students found nearly
13% of high school students and 4% of middle-schoolers had used Ritalin
without a prescription.

A study of 651 public school students in Wisconsin and Minnesota --
expected to be published early next year in the Journal of School
Psychology -- finds even more widespread abuses among all stimulants being
used to treat ADHD.

Thirty-four percent of students ages 11 to 18 who take ADHD medication
reported being approached to sell or trade their drugs. Among students who
weren't taking ADHD medication, 53% reported that some students gave away
or sold their medication.

''These are all drugs that have a pretty high probability of abuse,'' says
study co-author William Frankenberger, a psychology professor at the
University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire who has been tracking treatments for
ADHD for more than 20 years.

The Wisconsin survey also queried students about who dispenses medications
during the school day. Twice as many reported getting the drugs from the
school secretary (26%) as from the school nurse (13%).

Forty-one percent reported that they dispensed their medications to themselves.