Have you noticed the signs near our schools which proclaim them "Drug Free Zones?" That would be almost laughable if it weren't so ironic (the opposite of what it purports to be)! The official NEA Journal predicted in 1969 that: "New drama will play on the educational stage as DRUGS are introduced EXPERIMENTALLY to improve in the learner such qualities as personality, concentration and memory [Ritalin, etc.] The application of bio-chemical research findings, heretofore centered in the infra-human subjects, such as fish, could be a source of conspicuous controversy when CHILDREN become the objects of EXPERIMENTATION." (Emphasis added) Unfortunately, parents have been sold the idea that the use of drugs, such as Ritalin, (often MANDATORY) on their children is for "treatment" not "experimentation."

        In that same NEA article, the NEA anticipated that resistance on the part of parents would arise and pointed to a possible "solution:" ...there could be a tinderbox quality to the introduction of MANDATORY foster homes and "boarding schools" for children between the ages of two and three whose home environment was felt to have a MALIGNANT influence." (Emphasis added)

        Does that seem extremely outrageous to any of you? Are you saying to yourselves "That could never happen in America"? Well, you better think again! In April, 1998 a syndicated Washington Post news service article, published a number of places in the U.S. said: "MINNEAPOLIS- Minnesota lawmakers voted Thursday to build state-run boarding schools to house and educate children from poor families and TROUBLED neighborhoods...housing anywhere from 150 to 900 school children. Gov. Arne Carlson, the plan's author, described the three institutions planned for Minnesota as hybrids between orphanages and preparatory schools." The same article stated: "The measure's passage made Minnesota the FIRST state to return to the old fashioned notion of providing publicly funded living and schooling called orphanages in their era." (Emphasis added)

        Does the idea that children as young as two may be taken from parents and placed into such "orphanages" bother any of you? Children that young (and younger) are being forcibly removed from their parents care almost daily in every state of the Union, often on the flimsiest of excuses. Here in Utah they are placed in "foster homes" rather than "orphanages" but the effect is the same- a family is destroyed!

        When the children get just a little older and enter school many of them become victims of the school based drug pushers - NOT some other student but the schools administrators, psychologists, nurses and social workers! Parents are either coaxed into allowing their children to be drugged with Ritalin (or some other psychotropic drug) or, in many cases, they are being FORCED into accepting the doping of their children by court orders at the instigation of the schools. If the parents STILL should be so "abusive" and "uncaring" as to not allow their child or children to be drugged, the children are being brutally removed from the loving home environment and sent, at least in Utah, to some foster home where the drugging can be accomplished. All of this supposedly to combat an epidemic of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

        It is of extreme significance that California pediatric neurologist Dr. Fred A Baughman, Jr, in a letter to the New York Times of April 15, 1995, stated that: "ADHD was INVENTED, in committee, at the American Psychiatric Association in 1980." (Emphasis added) At various times since then the same "disorder" has been called: Hyperkinetic Child Syndrome, Hyperactive Child Syndrome, Minimal Brain Damage, Minimal Brain Dysfunction in Children, Minimal Cerebral Dysfunction, Minor Cerebral Dysfunction, and Attention Deficit Disorder.

        It is also extremely important to know that in the 1994 edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSMV-IV) (sometimes called the "bible" of psychiatry) it is acknowledged that: "There are NO laboratory tests that have been established as diagnostic of ADHD" It goes on to admit there are no "specific physical features associated with" the disorder.

        How then are all these thousands of children being diagnosed as having ADHD and "requiring treatment" with Ritalin or some other drug? To be diagnosed as having ADHD, according to the DSMV-IV, a child must exhibit six of nine symptoms of "inattention" or six of nine symptoms of what is called "hyperactivity-impulsivity." These eighteen "symptoms" all begin with the vague, ambiguous, undefined word "OFTEN": "often has difficulty sustaining attention in tasks or play activities"; "often does not seem to listen when spoken to directly"; "often FIDGETS with hands or feet or SQUIRMS in seat"; "often has difficulty playing or engaging in leisure activities QUIETLY"; etc. (Emphasis added)

        Now be honest: Does any one of you have children or grandchildren who do NOT exhibit such symptoms from time to time? Using the criteria of the psychiatrists, there probably isn't a child in the world who could not be "diagnosed" with ADHD and made subject to the "treatment" of the "experts!" A suspicious (or thinking) person might come to the conclusion that is the REASON the "symptoms" ARE so vague and ill defined.

        In the next column, we will examine what Ritalin IS, where it came from and how widely it is being used (and abused).