THE CURSE OF KID’S COCAINE By Sue Reid - Commentary by Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD

The Daily Mail 31st May 2003-06-01
THE CURSE OF KID’S COCAINE
By Sue Reid

Boys like it because it gives them £1 high, girls take it to stay slim. Here a major Mail investigation reveals how Ritalin the ‘miracle cure’ for hyperactive children is being openly peddled on streets and in playgrounds

A BLONDE, wearing the pinched face of poverty rocks a toddler in a buggy as’ she watches for her next customer She comforts the child then shares a joke with the heroin dealer plying his trade beside her on the bleak housing estate somewhere in the North of England.

The blonde is selling a drug relatively new to the streets here, a prescription pill known as the R Ball or Kiddie’s Coke. When I ask for half a dozen tablets, she reaches into the folds of the buggy to produce white pills in a plastic freezer bag each with a £3 price tag. As I turn away without buying, her swearing starts and the boy in the buggy begins to cry

Welcome to a world where Ritalin, the controversial drug used to treat behavioural problems in children, is fast becoming a popular recreational drug with a potential value of millions on the black market.

And the horrifying truth is that it is not just being sold in shabby alleyways or on run-down housing estates, but in respectable school playgrounds and middle-class homes across the country as more and more teenagers discover the buzz It gives them ‘when they chew or snort it

Young girls have also learned it will keep their bodies unnaturally thin because it acts as a powerful appetite suppressant. And at’ private schools and universities students crave it to keep them alert at exam time.

‘We reckon the abuse’ of Ritalin started in the UK about four years ago,’ says Janice Hill, director Of the drug monitoring clinic Overload Network in Edinburgh. ‘In the US it is on the top ten list of stolen and what happens there soon happens here, we have a lot of evidence of trading among children. Parents phone us but are public in case the social services take their child into care.

[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
'In the US it (Ritalin) is on the top ten list of stolen and what happens there soon happens here...']

It is becoming a drug of choice for the young In school corridors, we know that children are swapping packs of Ritalin for CDs.’ So what is Ritalin and why is it so readily available on British streets?

Today, 345,000 children in England and 21,000 in Wales -an incredible one in 20 of school-age children – are diagnosed as suffering from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder ADHD.

[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
The invented "disease" /"chemical imbalance", ADHD-invented out of thin air, making "patients" of normal toddlers, preschoolers, and children of all ages, is the linch-pin of the Ritalin epidemic. The principal perpetrator of this fraud and deception has been US and world-wide psychiatry-having sold out to Big Pharma. The central role of the specialty of neurology, that has sat by watching the victimization of the normal children in the guise of "treatment" for a brain/neurological disorder, must now be exposed and understood as well]

THE CONDITION is highly controversial because no one has proved it actually exists – more of that later.

[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
Diagnosis is always primary-if no abnormality/disease (physical abnormality = disease) there is nothing needing or justifying medical treatment]

But the treatment is Ritalin or mind-altering drugs like it. By 2007, it is predicted that one in seven of all schoolchildren will be on Ritalin or similar pills to control antisocial behaviour.

[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
One in seven is 14.3 %. Dr. William Carey of the University of Pennsylvania states 17% or 8.5 million school-aged children in the US are presently on psychiatric medication]

In some state primary class ‘rooms, more than 10 per cent of pupils are taking Ritalin. In junior school of 380 children in the South-East of England, 80 – more than 20 per cent – are taking these pills.

[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
In the US 60-70 percent in some classrooms have psychiatric diagnoses and are on psychiatric medication, most of all, ADHD, Ritalin and amphetamines.]

In America, where One in five children are prescribed Ritalin, the backlash has begun. Over the past decade, 186 youngsters have died after being dosed with this ‘chemical cosh’, many collapsing from heart complaints. There is also an epidemic of illegitimate use on campuses – the direct consequence of a generation raised on Ritalin.

In California, Diane Booth, has been jailed for refusing to allow her son, now ten, to take the drug. He has been placed in a children’s home where social workers can ensure he swallows his tablets daily. She is accused of medically neglecting her boy. From the start, Ritalin has been the subject of fierce debate in Britain, yet its popularity has soared. Now, a Mail investigation has uncovered the alarming fact that schools, doctors, and even parents all stand to profit enormously from Labelling a generation of children as social misfits who need powerful drugs to cope.

Schools are being handed thousands of pounds each year to teach children with the hyperactivity disorder.

Bruce Davies, a former detective constable who lectures on how to keep Ritalin secure in schools, says: ‘You only have to follow the money trail. The pharmaceutical companies profit if they sell more drugs.

The private psychiatrists make between £250 and £500 every time they diagnose a child with ADHD. The parents get extra state handouts if they have a disabled child.’

[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
The "blueprint" for the whole plan has come from US psychiatry, most of all from CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention Deficit Disorders) and the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health of the US Department of Health and Human Services]

And the more pills that are prescribed, the more likely that a proportion will find their way on to our streets.

Shockingly, our young have become the pawns of a lucrative multi-million pound Ritalin industry – an Industry that many believe will condemn them to a life of addiction.

[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
Most shocking of all, your young, just like our young, in the US are entirely normal but are made "patients" via the invented, fraudulent, entirely fraudulent "disease" ADHD]

THE STORY of how a drug to control antisocial children found a foothold in our society begins in 1987 at a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association. There, ADHD was first named as a disorder that made a child fall to concentrate at school. This so-called ailment was, said psychiatrists, accompanied by hyperactive behaviour treatable with the psycho-stimulant methylphenidate.

[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
Wrong-it began with claims it was a disease in 1970 Congressional hearings when it was called Minimal Brain Dysfunction/Disease-MBD, also hyperactive child syndrome. No proof of a somatic (brain or body abnormality was offered then or since. In 1980 for the DSM-III it was called ADD, attention deficit disorder. In 1987 came the first rendition of ADHD, in 1994, the second. Again, the first claims ADHD by whatever name was called a disease was 33 years ago, 1970. See page 4 of the History of the Fraud of Biological Psychiatry, 3/19/03, attached]

This drug, related to amphetamines, banned in Britain, was first used in the Fifties to combat narcolepsy, an illness where people suddenly fall asleep. Methylphenidate emerged again as a slimming pill in the Sixties. But it as the main ingredient of Ritalin that it found its market.

Doctors claimed that by altering the amount of dopamine a chemical messenger in the brain it miraculously enabled the child to focus.

[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
The problem being, as with every psychiatric disorder/disease in the DSM, that not one has a chemical or any objective, physical abnormality to make normal or more nearly normal. In every case the "chemical imbalance"/disorder/disease is illusory while the "chemical balancer"-Ritalin, amphetamine, any psychiatric drug, is, itself, the first real chemical imbalance/abnormality/disease]

The fact that Ritalin worked on the central nervous system and had the same sort of effect on a normal child as cocaine was not highlighted by the pharmaceutical industry.

Yet questions were soon being asked. Should a drug so closely related to illegal amphetamines handed out like Smarties to children? And did children who behave badly really need a powerful drug, with side-effects such as tremors, sleeplessness and height loss, to control them?

[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
Here was an assessment of this group of drugs given at the 1970 Gallagher hearing before the US Congress: Page 48, Gallagher Hearings Testimony at 1970 congressional hearing re funding pharmacological therapy for school problems. Dr John D. Griffith, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. -"I would like to point out that every drug, however innocuous, has some degree of toxicity. A drug, therefore, is a type of poison and its poisonous qualities must be carefully weighed against its therapeutic usefulness. A problem, now being considered in most of the Capitols of the Free World, is whether the benefits derived from Amphetamines outweigh their toxicity. It is the consensus of the World Scientific Literature that the Amphetamines are of very little benefit to mankind. They are, however, quite toxic. ...after many years of clinical trials it is now evident that this antidepressant effect of Amphetamines is very brief- on the order of days. If a patient attempts to overcome this tolerance to the drug, he runs the risk of becoming addicted and even more depressed." Who are the individuals of present-day psychiatry who have withheld this truth from the public, world-wide?]

More importantly, did this new ailment ADHD really exist?

[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
This, as the reader will see is the first, most fundamental question. If there is no disease, there is no justification for medical treatment]

If so, why has there never been an adequate inquiry into the reason why so many children are being diagnosed with it? And can a child dosed with Ritalin become dependent on drugs for life?

None of these questions was adequately addressed but that did not stop Ritalin becoming the universal panacea for controlling unruly youngsters in Britain. A rapid rise in the number of prescriptions has been followed by its abuse – yet we cannot say we weren’t warned. Five years ago, the Government’s Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology warned that Ritalin was in danger of becoming a ‘quick fix’ in the battle to keep control in schools.
It added: ‘There is evidence that the psychostimulants prescribed for attention deficit disorder are emerging as drugs of abuse among children in the U.S. and there is thus a case for monitoring in the UK.’

This wake-up call was ignored.

[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
Who was bought off to assure the wake-up call was ignored. Who are the inventors of ADHD, an contrived illusion of a disease?]

Today, more than half a million prescriptions for Ritalin and related drugs are written each year in England. Often, three months’ supply is collected from the chemist for a child, meaning that in one house there could be as many as 150 tablets – which could sell for up to £750 on the street. All it takes is for a few pills to be stolen from the bathroom cabinet at home or from a teacher’s drawer at school for Ritalin to get on to the black market.

Bruce Davies confirms that the drug is traded widely. ‘It is almost invisible because the main source is pills skimmed off from the prescription of a child, perhaps by a relative or a school friend,’ he says.

DAVIES was alerted to the scandal three years ago by a Darlington pharmacist, whose supplies of Ritalin were stolen from his shop. Another pharmacist in the North-East told Davies how a parent had found a white tablet in her daughter’s schoolbag and sought help to find out what it was.

The girl had admitted buying it at her comprehensive school from a 12-year-old boy in her class who had been prescribed Ritalin. He was selling his pills as a ‘£1 high’.
‘When I went to the school, I expected just one or two pupils to be on Ritalin and medication like it,’ Davies says. ‘Out of 300 kids, there were 30 on it.

[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
10%, not remarkable in the US, probably below the national average]

When I looked at how the drugs were being kept, it was a horror story. ‘There were hundreds of pills in an unlocked drawer just held in envelopes and packets. When I interviewed the 12-year-old, he said he got pestered every day of the week by other kids wanting his Ritalin.’

As a drug liaison officer for Durham police, Davies met girls who were buying Ritalin at school They told him it made them feel giddy, and afterwards sick and a bit tired. He presumed they wanted a high, but the girls said they used it to stay slim. In the same area of the North-East, three girls aged 14 were recently given warnings by police after they admitted dealing Ritalin at 50p a pm at their middle-class comprehensive school. One of the girls, who was on the drug, stole a full, unopened packet from her mother’s handbag and enlisted two classmates to sell it.

The other girls sampled the drug, one admitting that she crushed a pm and snorted it through a rolled up piece of paper. ‘You do it to be cool, because everyone else is doing it,’ she told the police.

TO UNDERSTAND why and how Ritalin is being traded with such apparent ease, we must understand how deeply embedded in the education system it has become. Many influential psychiatrists are adamant that ADHD does exist and advocate Ritalin as treatment. Professor Eric Taylor of the Institute of Psychiatry in London believes ADHD to be genetic and cites research refuting the theory that Ritalin leads to addiction.

[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
All psychiatrists who insist ADHD is a disorder/disease/chemical imbalance must be made to testify as to it's scientific basis, under oath. After all it is the excuse/reason for prescribing controlled substances. Claiming it is a disease, a brain disease, they must have objective evidence, child by child, person by person. With no objective evidence, they cannot be said to have a disease, any disease. Additionally, in that ADHD is claimed to be a "neurological" disorder/disease, and a "neurobiological disorder/disease--leading academic neurologists and child neurologists should be asked why no objective evidence exists that ADHD is an actual disease, and how, without demonstrable abnormalities on examination or tests, it can be supported that a disease exists, needing/requiring such treatment?]

At the National Attention Disorder Information and Support Service, spokeswoman Andrea Bilbow says ADHD is a horrible reality that can make a parent begin to hate the child they love. ‘They will tell you that without this medication their children would never be in school, that it is their family lifeline. It is stopping youngsters committing suicide or ending up in prison. It keeping families together,’ says Bilbow.

[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
Lay spokespersons, and other believers will not suffice when it comes to dispensing controlled substances. The scientific evidence must, at long last, be set forth, nothing less will suffice. Both Dr. Eric Tayor and I testified to a committee of the Council on Europe in November, 2001, and at that time no firm evidence to support validation of a disease was presented. I know none is available today. "Horrible" reality; "severe" psychiatric disorder and other such testimony do not substitute for scientific proof and it objective proof they must have to prescribe dangerous, addictive drugs. ]

But others such as the Lincoln University law lecturer Barry Turner, who advises parents fighting to keep their children off Ritalin, insists that pharmaceutical companies have significantly played down the drug’s dangers. ‘ADHD is an invented illness there is not one piece of validated scientific evidence that it is a medical complaint,’ he says.

Professor Hamid Ghodse, chair of Addiction psychiatry at St George’s Hospital in London and president of the United Nations International Narcotics Control Board, claims too many children are being prescribed Ritalin when they are probably just naughty. ‘It is natural to feel uneasy about the liberal use of a drug with the specific intention of modifying a child’s behaviour so he or she becomes more compliant and less troublesome. We are medicalising something that is often not a medical condition,’ he says.

[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
Dr. Ghodse and the INCB in effect collude with the psychiatric-pharmaceutical cartel saying "to many children are being prescribed," and "something that is often not a medical condition," when there is absolutely no proof of a disease abnormality in a single child diagnosed ADHD-when there is no proof whatsoever that ADHD as ever defined in the DSM is a disease/abnormality of the body or brain. I have challenged this stance of the INCB in writing on several occasions. Their stance is like saying the problem is one of mis-diagnosis and overdiagnosis, allowing as though there is such a thing as ADHD when there is no such thing at all. They are accomplices.]

There are no brain scans, blood tests or any other clinical tests used during a doctor’s diagnosis of ADHD.

[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
there cannot be a test when there is no abnormality-defined-to test for]

Fifty medical, biological, emotional and mental conditions, mimic the symptoms of ADHD.

[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
Are we speaking of conditions or diseases. We must be specific in defining terms. Disorder, disease, chemical imbalance implies an objective abnormality and this after all is what a disease is. No number of symptoms without an abnormality constitutes a disease]

‘A seven-year-old who has been up all night watching television, a 12-year-old who lives on a diet of cheap pizzas and fizzy sugared drinks, a teenager whose parents are fighting all the time, can show exactly the same symptoms as those said to be exhibited in a child with ADHD,’ insists Janice Hill of drugs charity Overload Network. ‘If a school has six or seven kids running around the classroom, of course they are tempted to blame ADHD,’ she explains. ‘They think it will help the whole class to have these children quietened down. ‘A lot of parents are actually happy to have their children diagnosed as ADHD. It means they have a ready-made excuse for their badly behaved children.’
‘We also believe that a high percentage of children are being diagnosed with ADHD without protest from parents because the family gets a disability living allowance of up to £53 a week. They come to rely on the money.’

[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
This plan to seduce and induce comes straight from the interaction between the US Congress, psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry]

Around the country, Ritalin is tearing families apart. Beverley Spry’s son, now 13, was barred from his toddlers’ group because of his violent, aggressive behaviour. His grandparents insisted Beverley warn them whenever she planned a visit so they could hide everything he might break.

‘We first noticed something wrong when he was 18 months old. He was such hard work it broke up my first marriage. When be arrived in his reception class at his Surrey primary school, the teacher said he was more noisy than other children.’ Beverley reluctantly agreed to put Timothy on Ritalin. He takes the slow release tablets, which last for 12 hours. They have calmed him down so he can concentrate on his work. But at weekends she takes him off the pills. He immediately sleeps better and his appetite returns. ‘I don’t like my child on drugs but what else can I do?’ she asks.

[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
the conclusions of parents do not substitute objective evidence of somatic abnormality which is the equal of disease. Otherwise we speak of the treatment of symptoms which is all that ADHD treatment is today]

Other parents refuse to let their children take it. One Lincolnshire father is planning legal action against a comprehensive school that tried to bar his son unless he took Ritalin.
‘I was appalled,’ he says. ‘I did not want him on drugs. I didn’t want his medical records saying he was suffering from some hyperactive disorder. I have now removed him from the school.’

ONE FATHER from Northern Ireland is planning to sue his estranged wife for giving their son Ritalin. He says the boy’s mother is motivated by the disability living allowance.
‘When I have him at the weekends I never give him Ritalin,’ he says. ‘He acts just fine. What is this drug doing to our child? His mother just has him on it for the money.

In Basingstoke, another father is fighting education and health officials who have said ‘no pill, no school’ to his 11-year-old son.

[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
this too is psycho-pharm strategy exported from the US]

He says his former wife receives disability living allowance to care for their child and his primary school gets an extra £3,300 funding to give him special help.

‘Both the school and my wife have a good reason to keep him on the tablets, although I think there’s nothing wrong with him.’ What is the future for the Ritalin generation? Peter Stoker, director of Britain’s National Drug Prevention Alliance says: ‘Any drug that works on the central nervous system has propensity for addiction. We should all be worried about these psychostimulants being used on children. Remember that, for years, scientists said cocaine was safe.’

There have been no long-term studies on Ritalin. No one knows what will happen next. But, as in America, there are plenty of cases emerging of British children raised on Ritalin who are now addicted to it – and other stimulants.

[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
plus involuntary movements, chorea, tics, growth retardation including atrophy of the brain, addiction, cardiac complications including hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, and arrhythmias, including cardiac arrest and death. 200 deaths were reported to the FDA MedWatch program in the US, 1990-2000 and this is a voluntary physician-reporting system. This may be no more than 10 percent of the actual numbers. There is no program of mandatory reporting]

Simon, aged 20, lives at home with his parents in Yorkshire. At 14, excitable and unable to concentrate, he was diagnosed with ADHD and put on Ritalin. He quickly lost weight, felt sick, suffered bouts of even more aggressive behaviour and talked about suicide. He twice tried to hang himself

Today Simon has left school behind, but not Ritalin. He cannot live without a fix of the drug. He has switched from taking the tablet orally to injecting it, sometimes mixed with heroin. He is a registered drug addict, may never hold down a proper job, may never get married or have a happy life. From a safe, ordinary background, with a caring family, Simian’s story is a tragic postscript to a childhood blighted by the dubious wonder drug Ritalin.

[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
It should be apparent from all of the above that the most pressing question of all is whether ADHD is an actual disease or not. Your government and ours should take testimony from the leaders of psychiatry and neurology-under oath-to answer the question: "Is ADHD a real disease/abnormality of the body or brain, yes or no? Familiar with ADHD and with all of the medical-scientific literature, I can tell the reader that no such proof exists, or ever will, given the hopelessly subjective and changing nature of ADHD]