http://www.mackinac.org/article.asp?ID=3830
Reining in Ritalin
This article originally appeared in the Oct. 28 Detroit News.
A package of bills before the Michigan Legislature would prohibit school
employees from recommending that any student be prescribed Ritalin, a drug as
potent as cocaine, to treat a "disease"—Attention Deficit Hyperactivity
Disorder (ADHD)—about which many medical professionals have grave doubts.
The measures come none too soon. It is a mystery how a diagnosis as
controversial as ADHD, and its equally controversial treatment with powerful
drugs, can be unquestioningly embraced by America's educational and medical
establishments.
Apparently, America is suddenly afflicted with a massive epidemic affecting
between 4 and 6 million children, while children elsewhere remain relatively
unscathed. Michigan ranks third among states in the use of Ritalin, which
child psychiatrist Carl L. Kline of the University of British Columbia calls
"nothing more than a street drug being administered to cover the fact that we
don't know what's going on with these children."
Michigan lawmakers are responding to impassioned letters and phone calls from
parents who feel pressured by teachers or school officials to place their
children on Ritalin, which is classified by the U.S. Department of Justice,
Drug Enforcement Agency and the World Health Organization in the same addictive
category as cocaine and methadone. The U.S. Department of Energy's Nobel-prize
winning Brookhaven National Laboratory recently found that Ritalin affected the
brain's dopamine system with more potency than cocaine. Psychiatrist Nora
Volkow said her research team was "shocked" by results that "clearly show that
the notion that Ritalin is a weak stimulant is completely incorrect."
The bills being considered would also prevent school administrators from
barring a child from school because parents refused to allow the child to take
Ritalin or other ADHD drugs such as Adderall. They would establish a
"Psychotropic Drug Use Advisory Council" to recommend proper policies. Another
bill addresses the most frightening aspect of the Ritalin controversy: Parents
could no longer be turned in to Child Protective Services for refusing to give
their child drugs they regard as worse than the problem they are meant to
solve.
A separate bill, introduced by Rep. John Hanson, D-Dexter, would very
reasonably require the Department of Education to at least review its
guidelines for dispensing prescription drugs in schools.
Other states have adopted and are adopting similar laws—common-sense measures
in the wake of nationwide concerns that we may be drugging millions of children
to make classrooms quieter.
Why should school nurses be dispensing these drugs when the public debate is
awash in medical misgivings, not only about the drugs themselves, but also
about the diagnosis that gives rise to their use? Dr. Lawrence H. Diller, a
specialist in behavioral and developmental pediatrics and author of "Running on
Ritalin," wrote to a worried parent in 1998: "The reason why you have been
unable to obtain any articles or studies presenting clear and confirming
evidence of a physical or chemical abnormality associated with ADHD is that
there are none."
Ken Livingston, professor in the Department of Psychology and Program in
Cognitive Science at Vassar College, articulates an argument for school choice
in the ADHD controversy. Livingston says there exists "no mechanism, of the
sort one would find in a school-choice-based system of education, for parents
to seek out schools tailored to the temperaments and capabilities of their
children." Instead, he says, "it becomes necessary to find ways of making
children able to perform in the environment as they find it. And, in late
20th-century America, when it is difficult or inconvenient to change the
environment, we don't think twice about changing the brain of the person who
has to live in it."
Michigan's schools should tailor themselves to the needs of children, not the
other way around. Until clearer medical and psychiatric consensus emerges on
just what sort of problem our children are having, its causes, and what an
acceptable solution might be, our schools should not behave as if such
consensus exists.
Lawmakers are wise to reassess ADHD and the powerful drugs used to treat it.