Pharmaceutical blackmail

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 28 May 2001 10:03:00 GMT

FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED AUG. 18, 2000
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
Pharmaceutical blackmail
Authorities use a heavy hand to keep kids on drugs

About that "zero drug tolerance" policy in our schools: Does it really mean what it says? Or would it come closer to the truth for school administrators to admit what they really oppose are pushers offering competing consciousness-altering substances?

Do our public schools today constitute a kind of official, tax-supported dope monopoly which will even threaten to take children away from parents should they refuse to go along with the mind-numbing nostrums which our schoolmasters themselves now press on nearly a quarter of our young boys, the better to keep those valuable but restless butts planted in their seats?

The Albany Times Union, in a May 7 copyrighted story, tells what happened to parents Michael and Jill Carroll of Albany, N.Y., when they tried to take their son, 7-year-old Kyle, off the Ritalin.

Kyle Carroll was first prescribed Ritalin last year, after he fell behind at school. Teachers drew up an Individualized Education Plan, a standard course of action for children with "special needs." But last fall, when Kyle started second grade, the Ritalin didn't seem to be doing much good. Furthermore, the Carrolls grew concerned that Kyle was only sleeping about five hours a night and eating just one meal a day -- lunch. So they told school officials they wanted to take Kyle off the Ritalin for two weeks to see if that helped.

That's when they got a call, and then a visit, from a Child Protective Services worker, based on a complaint from Kyle's school guidance counselor.

The charge? "Child abuse," in the form of "medical neglect." In plain English? Expressing doubts about keeping their child on dope.

As a result, the Times Union reports the Carrolls are now on a statewide list of alleged child abusers, and find themselves "thrust into an Orwellian family court battle to clear their name and ensure their child isn't removed from their home."

The child remains on the medication, "in part because they fear child welfare workers will take him away if they don't," the Albany daily reports.

Furthermore, the Albany paper found the Carrolls' case is far from unique, reporting: "Public schools are increasingly accusing parents of child abuse and neglect if they balk at giving their children medication such as Ritalin, a stimulant being prescribed to more and more students."

The American Academy of Pediatrics reports as many as 3.8 million schoolchildren, mostly boys, have now been diagnosed with the newly-coined "ADHD" -- attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder -- a psychiatric "disease" with symptoms to which most of our grandparents would have responded by simply smiling: "Boys will be boys." Or perhaps by asking, "Could it be that he finds your school boring? Does it really make sense to spend three or four years teaching reading, a skill easily mastered in six weeks if you'd just use phonics?"

At least a million children now take Ritalin for this "disorder." In two school districts near Virginia Beach, Va., for instance, a 1999 study by psychologist Gretchen LeFever found fully 20 percent of white boys in the fifth grade in the 1995-96 school year were receiving prescription drugs for ADHD. And even the AAP acknowledged in a recent study that many cases are misdiagnosed.

"This thing is so scary," says Patricia Weathers, of Millbrook, a suburb of Poughkeepsie, N.Y. Officials at the Millbrook school district called police and child protective services when she took her 9-year-old son, Michael Mozer, off medications earlier this year.

Weathers reported her child's prescribed drug cocktail -- including Ritalin, the anti-depressant Paxil, and Dexedrine (another stimulant, like Ritalin) caused her boy -- now attending a private school -- to hallucinate.

"Absent evidence that the lives of children are at stake when they're not on Ritalin," USA Today editorialized this week, "no arm of the state should be ramming the drug treatment down parents' -- and children's -- throats."

Amen to that. The underlying problem here is the notion that children belong first to the state -- that they're best "socialized" in state-run institutions, and that biological parents are allowed to retain custody only at the discretion of school and "child welfare" officials, who after all have "professional diplomas," and thus "know best."

No free country can long operate under such a presumption, with its inevitable corrosive effect on the family. And this -- at least as much as the corresponding academic failures of the public schools -- is what drives the large and growing movement for separation of school and state. (See: www.sepschool.org)

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available by dialing 1-800-244-2224; or via web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.

Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com

"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right." -- Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926)

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken

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Quotes

Government doesn't work. Never did. Never will. Can't. But there are lots of good people. Love them.

-- Bill St. Clair

The Atlanta Declaration

Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

-- L. Neil Smith

Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair