MINNESOTA HIGH ON GIVING KIDS DRUGS TO SIT STILL THROUGH LESSONS TO JUST SAY NO

Minnesota has made it into the Top 10. According to a recent report by the
Drug Enforcement Administration, Minnesota ranks ninth in the nation for
the use of Ritalin, an amphetamine-like substance used to treat attention
deficit disorder.

We are not surprised; interviews we have conducted support the statistics.
We talked with a Minneapolis public school teacher last year who said she
had five children in her class on this drug. High school students tell us
that you can buy Ritalin in the halls of every high school.

It is difficult to gauge just how many American children are on this
not-so-controlled controlled substance. But the conservative estimate is
more than 3 million. State Rep. Barb Sykora, R-Excelsior, has sagaciously
asked that $50,000 of state funds be allotted to find out how many children
are taking Ritalin in Minnesota.

For all the talk in America about wars on drugs, we are a nation that is
coming to believe the creed that where there's a pill there's a way.
Paradoxically enough, when the young people we pushed through the DARE
program encounter a problem -- be it sitting still or making themselves do
something they do not particularly want to do, like read -- we send them
for a prescription, often for Ritalin.

Indeed, there is considerable anecdotal evidence to the effect that we are
more rather than less compelling students to take drugs. I have heard it
said that when a teacher suggests to parents that their child be medically
evaluated, he or she is obliquely threatening -- either put your child on
medication or it is off to special ed with little Johnny.

Teachers understandably explain that a few disruptive children make it
impossible to do anything in class, and so those children either have to go
out of the class or to the local pharmacy for something that will render
them more pliable. But the Ritalin poster child is not only the fifth-grade
boy who gets up and wanders around the classroom. There are many parents
who will use psychotropic drugs to get their children to try to stretch
their grades from Bs to As.

Ritalin, to say nothing of the Dexedrine that doctors also are doling out,
is a very powerful substance with serious side effects. Worse yet, the
pharmaceutical firms that produce these teacher's little helpers have very
little motive for studying the long-term effects of medications such as
Ritalin. Though we have a veritable army of children on a speed-like
substance, we do not know what the long-term effects of Ritalin and other
licit uppers will be.

The argument that is often given is simply this: If Ritalin helps your
child focus, then he must have some kind of chemical imbalance that is
corrected by the drug. One may as well argue that if a glass of wine helps
you relax, you must have a chemical imbalance. Like speed and cocaine,
which often are used by people to enhance job performance, Ritalin will
help almost everybody sit still and focus.

It ought, however, to be given as a last resort to children. But because
public schools do not have the resources, we do precisely what we tell our
children not to do -- we take the easy way out. Rather than trying to be
more flexible and adjusting the schedules of children with adjustment
problems and/or offering the now almost defunct intensive talk therapy, we
slip kids pills and send them off to health classes where they receive
high-minded lectures to the effect that no matter how bad things get, they
should never turn to drugs.