Drugs for ADHD - blessing or curse?
The controversy over ADHD diagnosis and the drugs prescribed for it has not gone away, and rightfully so. In most cases, the drugs that are being given to children as well as adults are powerfully addictive stimulants.
A new study reported by USA Today says that parents of children taking ADHD medication are about nine times more likely to also use the drugs than parents of children who aren't on these drugs. The study of more than 100,000 privately insured children was done by Medco Health Solutions Inc., which manages pharmacy benefits.
Medco data shows that the growth in adult use of drugs for ADHD, such as Ritalin and Concerta, outpaced the increases in childhood prescriptions since 2000. About 2 million children and 1 million adults are prescribed medications for ADHD each month. According to the FDA, adult use of the drugs nearly doubled between March 2002 and June 2005.
The maker of one of the drugs financed the study, presumably to find out more about who to market to. In 2006, U.S. sales of ADHD drugs totaled about $3.5 billion, according to health care information company IMS Health.
Scientists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated problems with the stimulant drugs drive nearly 3,100 people to ERs each year. The FDA has ordered that drug makers of 15 ADHD-related chemicals must start providing warnings about the risks of cardiovascular problems with the drugs.
Because stimulant drugs such as Ritalin have such a high potential for abuse, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has placed tight, Schedule II controls on their manufacture, distribution, and prescription.
A study from the National Institute on Drug Abuse last year estimated that more than 1.6 million American teens and young adults misused these drugs during a 12-month period, and 75,000 became addicted. In response to this information, one pediatrician is noted as saying “that seventy-five thousand addicts is more alarming than a few hundred heart problems.”
We’d like to hear your concerns about these drugs. Are the billions of dollars in sales overshadowing the damage caused by the drugs? Do you find it alarming that pharmaceutical companies began targeting adult ADHD once the increase in prescriptions to kids slowed? Do you find it more troubling that there are heart attacks, strokes and deaths from the drugs, or that there hundreds of thousands of young people abusing these harmful substances and tens of thousands becoming addicted to them?
Article by Eric Mitchell
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A new study reported by USA Today says that parents of children taking ADHD medication are about nine times more likely to also use the drugs than parents of children who aren't on these drugs. The study of more than 100,000 privately insured children was done by Medco Health Solutions Inc., which manages pharmacy benefits.
Medco data shows that the growth in adult use of drugs for ADHD, such as Ritalin and Concerta, outpaced the increases in childhood prescriptions since 2000. About 2 million children and 1 million adults are prescribed medications for ADHD each month. According to the FDA, adult use of the drugs nearly doubled between March 2002 and June 2005.
The maker of one of the drugs financed the study, presumably to find out more about who to market to. In 2006, U.S. sales of ADHD drugs totaled about $3.5 billion, according to health care information company IMS Health.
Scientists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated problems with the stimulant drugs drive nearly 3,100 people to ERs each year. The FDA has ordered that drug makers of 15 ADHD-related chemicals must start providing warnings about the risks of cardiovascular problems with the drugs.
Because stimulant drugs such as Ritalin have such a high potential for abuse, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has placed tight, Schedule II controls on their manufacture, distribution, and prescription.
A study from the National Institute on Drug Abuse last year estimated that more than 1.6 million American teens and young adults misused these drugs during a 12-month period, and 75,000 became addicted. In response to this information, one pediatrician is noted as saying “that seventy-five thousand addicts is more alarming than a few hundred heart problems.”
We’d like to hear your concerns about these drugs. Are the billions of dollars in sales overshadowing the damage caused by the drugs? Do you find it alarming that pharmaceutical companies began targeting adult ADHD once the increase in prescriptions to kids slowed? Do you find it more troubling that there are heart attacks, strokes and deaths from the drugs, or that there hundreds of thousands of young people abusing these harmful substances and tens of thousands becoming addicted to them?
Article by Eric Mitchell
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Labels: children, prescription
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The simple fact of human economics is that people have needs and will fulfill those needs any way they can: moral or legal threats be damned. These threats are artifices of recent society and its mores rather than biological imperatives. The latter will always win.
This is why you have black markets of drugs, mp3, etc. Any attempt to restrict fulfillment of a need drives substitute seeking. Any attempt to limit substitutes will create black markets. Black markets have structural advantages over licit markets that perpetuate their existence.
If people divert these drugs, passing laws won't change a thing other than to add more cruelty and capriciousness to our society. Did it ever occur to anyone that people who take Ritalin, or take Meth, may simply be "self medicating" to survive that society throws at them. There happens to be a group that use "legal" avenues to achieve the same thing: they're labeled medically as people with ADHD or ADD. Methamphetamine is a legally prescribable treatment for ADHD/ADD along with its cousins Ritalin and Adderall.
Am concerned about diversion of ADHD/ADD drugs to abuse? Sure, up to a point. It's not an absolute concern - that is, I'm willing to tolerate it based on the benefits of those drugs to society overall. I tolerate a 9-11 of traffic deaths every month for the benefits of private car ownership. It comes back to needs and what people will do for them. People have always used/abused drugs and 1000 years from now still will be doing do - it's a biological imperative as primal as sex.
As someone who struggled with 40 years of undiagnosed ADD and who now takes Adderall I have a certain vested interest but also a certain knowledge a moralizer can't possibly have.
So do I think ADHD/ADD are really diseases? Not really unless you also say that being black or female are diseases also. However, society as a whole is exceptionally intolerant of us so the question becomes which do you pick 1) force society to accept us, our inability to fight our biology to adapt to a cultural habit of industrial conformity that has only a century and half of previous existence and then shut off the drugs, or 2) realize there are things you can't change things larger than you and take "performance enhancing" drugs to survive in society.
Well, that's an adult question to decide. Do parents, doctors, and especially the state (as teachers or social workers) have enough moral clarity and lack of moral hazard to really make the decision for children. I definitely don't think any state or corporate agent does and there's lots of evidence that these drugs are used primarily for state expediency as much as for corporate profit.
The militaristic Prussian design of our public schools selects and rewards only for anyone without ADHD/ADD-like genetics. What can one do to survive if you don't have the lucky genes? Again: do you pick pointless self-annihilation or coopted survival through pharmacy?
Even without thinking, the answer is pretty obvious.