the number of school-age children on Ritalin today in the United States is 5,000,000. Since Ritalin represents 70% of the total prescriptions for amphetamine-type drugs, we can add the other 30% and we have well over 7,000,000 of our school children in this country on stimulant drugs. In 1971, when estimates of Ritalin prescription use was under 200,000, our country was alarmed enough that the DEA classified Ritalin and other amphetamines as Schedule II drugs, a category that indicates significant risk of abuse. The number of children on psychiatric stimulant drugs today (7,000,000) is 40 times the 1970 number (175,000). This has to be a cause for major alarm in all adults concerned for the welfare of our children. Yet even this alarming fact is not the whole picture. We are not only giving more and stronger amphetamines like Adderall and Dexedrine to our children, we are also witnessing a dramatic increase in the use of adult antidepressants with the children. Arianna Huffington reported 735,000 children ages 6-18 on Prozac and related anti-depressants in 1996, up 80% since 1994. This included a 400% increase in the number of children ages 6-12 on Prozac in just one year, 1995 to 1996.(4) A 1998 article by Kate Muldoon(5) reports the number as 909,000. In a more recent article, Ms. Huffington reports that, despite disturbing evidence of drug-induced manic reactions, the number of antidepressant prescriptions for children continues to soar, reaching 1,664,000 in 1998.(6)
The bottom line is that we are giving stronger and stronger psychiatric drugs to more and more children. Many of our children are taking more than one of these drugs at a time, and many of these drugs were never even tested and approved for children. Probably over 8,000,000 school-age children in the United States are on powerful psychiatric drugs today. Other than our neighbor Canada, no other countries in the world are using psychiatric drugs this way with their children; it is a distinctly North American phenomenon.
DEA data puts Texas at number 31 in a listing of 1998 retail distribution for methylphenidate and d-amphetamine, and number four on dl-amphetamine--so let's just say we're right in the middle, about average in this country. What does it mean that 8,000,000 children are on psychiatric drugs? U.S. census data reveals that the United States population for ages 6-18 is about 51,473,000; this would indicate that approximately 15% of our school-age children are on psychiatric drugs. Does this seem unbelievable? Two recent research articles clearly demonstrate there are communities, one in Virginia, the other in the Vancouver, Canada area, where the rates of stimulant prescriptions to children is 20%.(7) The International Narcotics Control Board reports that in some American schools, as many as 40% of children in a class are on methylphenidate.(8) A recent Time Magazine (10/25/99) article describing a week in a typical American high school, reported the estimate of the school social worker that as many as 20% of the school's students take psychiatric drugs. There are large disparities from school to school and county to county, but however you slice it, the numbers are amazingly high. Since the population of Texas is approximately 13% of the total United States population, that means about 1,000,000 of the children in our elementary and secondary schools in Texas are on psychiatric drugs.
