RESEARCHERS FIND BLACK MARKET FOR RITALIN AMONG STUDENTS

Medication:Abuse potential is indicated as 16 percent of students polled
say they've been asked to sell,trade or give away the drug.

Milwaukee-Sixteen percent of students in kindergarten through high
school who are prescribed Ritalin say they've been approached to sell,
give away or trade their pills, a new study by Marshfield Clinic
researchers here reveals.

It suggests that abuse of Ritalin - a drug that thousands of students
take to help them concentrate in school - is far more common than has
been believed.

"This is probably an underreporting. It's a conservative figure,"
Marshfield psychologist Frederick Theye said of the 16 percent who
said they had been pressured to part with the drug. "We had several of
them say to us spontaneously, 'I was asked to sell or give this to my
classmates.' That was our first warning that this (abuse) was out there."

The study also found lax security for storing Ritalin and other
medications in many schools. Policies ranged from keeping Ritalin
under lock and key to allowing students to carry it around in their
pockets and take it as needed.

"What we're saying to (schools) is: 'Heads up. This is a potential
area for concern, and you ought to be proactive rather than
reactive,'" They said.

The study involved 53 rural and small-town schools in Wisconsin that
collectively enroll 15,800 students. Of those, 161 students who have
been treated for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder at the
Marshfield Clinic for at least five years were surveyed and included
in the study. Results were published in the medical journal
Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics.

Checked-by: "Rich O'Grady"