Pubdate: Wed, 07 Jan 1998
Date: January 7, 1998
Source: The Oakland Tribune
Author:   James C. Rego

This is in response to an article in the Tribune (Dec. 7)
discussing how the drug Ritalin is becoming the "college
students' drug of choice."

One cannot but find irony in the extreme when, on the one hand we
like to think of our schools as drug-free zones, and on the
other, be furiously pumping Ritalin into our younger kids in
these schools as if trying to set record profits for
psychiatrists and the stockholders of pharmaceutical companies.

Whose problem are we really trying to solve with this drug,
anyway? Anyone who thinks Ritalin is an innocent drug needs to
discover why an alleged major side effect of Ritalin is suicide.
Basic common sense dictates that any drug that has the power to
alter brain chemistry that much is by no means safe.

How utterly hypocritical. How can we expect our children to shun
drug use and a lifestyle based upon the view that whenever you're
having problems you solve it with drugs, when we allow the
psychiatric industry to virtually shove it down their throats in
record amounts at such an early age?

Then wonder in perplexed bewilderment why we now have Ritalin
becoming college students' drug of choice.

James C. Rego
Concord, CA