The View From Here

SAYING NO (AND YES) TO DRUGS

Yes, it's back-to-school time. Our little ones and our not-so-little ones
have returned to the schoolhouse, or more likely to the regional eduplex,
to imbibe the important lessons of life.

One of those lessons, of course, is that they must say no to drugs, which
is imparted to them in DARE courses, for Drug Abuse Resistance Education,
offered by local uniformed police officers so that the message may carry
the full authority of the law.

But, alas, once the DARE class is over, or even in the middle of the DARE
class, quite possibly, a good many of the little ones will make the trek to
the nurse's office for their daily fix of Ritalin, a drug that is similar
in its action on the nervous system to cocaine. A "Schedule II" controlled
substance, in federal drug-control terms, right up there with heroin and
morphine. "Pediatric cocaine," one critic calls it.

Ritalin is big stuff in the schools, if you haven't heard of it. It is
prescribed to deal with the highly fashionable Attention Deficit Disorder,
or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, which is one of those fabulous
conditions that the American psychology industry has hit upon in the past
20 years or so - what used to be known as the fidgets.

You wouldn't believe how many of our little ones all of a sudden have that
grand-sounding disorder. A kid won't sit still, doesn't pay attention, and
the next thing you know, maybe at the urging of a teacher or a counselor,
the mother takes the kid to the family doctor, and bam! - Attention Deficit
Disorder. Plus one prescription for Ritalin.

Nationwide somewhere between 1.5 million and 3 million kids are on Ritalin,
somewhere between 3 and 5 percent of all schoolchildren are on it, the
friendly school nurse dispensing it per directions of the family doctor.

I have heard local teachers estimate as many as 10 percent of kids around
here are on it. Ray Colucciello, the superintendent of Schenectady schools,
thinks it's more like the national average.

That would mean between 255 and 425 Schenectady schoolkids who make the
daily visit to the nurse's office for their fix, or their dose, and much
the same in every other school district.

What does the stuff do? The same as cocaine - it focuses the mind, helps
you concentrate. So instead of a kid squirming around or even bouncing off
the walls, you have a kid keeping still and minding his p's and q's.

Does it improve academic performance? Not according to a 1992 study, which
concluded, "The short-term effects . . . on academic performance are
minimal compared to the effects on behavior, and . . . there is no evidence
of beneficial effects on learning or academic achievement."

But yes, it does improve behavior. I hear that all the time - "It works."

So that's another little lesson for our children, a conflicting lesson,
which most of us have probably learned for ourselves even though we may
deny it for the sake of propriety: Drugs work.

You feel sluggish, you have a cup of coffee. You feel wound up, you have a
bottle of beer. You're tense, you smoke a cigarette. Maybe a little
marijuana? A snort of coke? An injection of heroin? People don't do those
things because they're ineffective, ladies and gentlemen. They do them
because they work.

Sure, Ritalin works. From what I've read, it would help anyone concentrate
better, just as alcohol or marijuana works on everyone.

But how dumb do we think our kids are?

I believe that's a good question. I don't need lectures about the benefits
of modern psychology, with its fanciful syndromes and disorders and its
precious interventions and outcomes.

I'd like to know how dumb we think our kids are when we have them get up in
the middle of their DARE class and truck down to the nurse's office for
their Ritalin. That's what I'd like to know.