Would You Give Your Child Cocaine?

As seen in this OpEd opinion piece, another voice to the chorus of protest:

While unfunded individuals and grass-roots groups are screaming at the top of their lungs about psychiatrists drugging our children based on made-up diseases, drug companies run hourly television ads to spread the false message of chemical imbalances. That no blood is ever drawn to prove this imbalance and that no normal child has Ritalin or Prozac coursing through their veins hasn't stopped this catch-phrase from becoming our version of the flat-earth concept widely accepted 400 years ago.

While teachers and psychiatrists are paired up to push drugs to "help" schoolchildren study, we also have TeenScreen partnering with psychiatrists coming in on the child suicide angle. Behind both groups are money-hungry billion dollar drug companies. It doesn't matter that TeenScreen identifies eighty-four non-suicidal teens for evaluation for every sixteen it correctly identifies (that's just more money for the psychiatric profession when they prescribe the drugs).

For today however, let's not even argue against this fabricated disease (Attention Deficit Disorder) or this sensationalistic worry about suicide (children are six times more likely to die in automobile accidents), but instead let's take a stroll through the KNOWN side-effects of one drug which psychiatrists happily prescribe to millions.

The list of undesired effect of Ritalin are both impressive and scary.