From the September 2001 Idaho Observer:

Texas education activists nail Ritalin scam

AUSTIN, Texas -- Texans for Safe Education released to the general public August 24, 2001 a letter from the Texas Education Agencys (TEA) head lawyer, David Anderson, stating that it is unlawful for school personnel to require kids take Ritalin or other psychoactive drugs in order to participate in public school.

Texans For Safe Education is alarmed at the explosive growth in the use of psychiatric drugs on United States school children, and especially alarmed with the coercion of parents by school personnel to have their children undergo psychiatric evaluation and take psychiatric drugs. The group has heard from parents whose children were threatened with expulsion from school if they refused to accept psychiatric evaluation and/or drugs.

John Breeding, PhD, Director of Texans for Safe Education, further charges that the ADHD industry itself is a fraud. “These drugs are being prescribed without any objective scientific evidence of the existence of any medical disease,” said Dr. Breeding. “Even the National Institute of Health Consensus Conference on ADHD in 1998 stated, an independent diagnostic test for ADHD does not exist. We estimate that up to 1 million school-aged children in Texas are being drugged for such phantom illnesses, and find this very troubling. The widespread drugging of these children is afraud being perpetrated against the children and families of Texas. It is important that the Texas Education Agency has stated that school personnel should not be attempting to force parents to participate in this fraud.”

Fred Baughman, MD, a neurologist, said, “Throughout medicine, with the exception of psychiatry, physicians are dealing with objective disease, such as high blood sugar denoting diabetes, or malignant cells denoting cancer.

Only psychiatry deals exclusively with symptoms, with the subjective, never with disease. ADHD is not a disease.”

“There is no chemical imbalance, as drug-pushing psychiatrists claim for every diagnosis. There is nothing to balance. The first and only chemical imbalance is from the Ritalin itself, from the amphetamine itself, from whatever psychiatric drug or drugs that are given, and these drugs are detectable in every body fluid, in every organ. The drugs are the one and only objective abnormality in psychiatric patients. We must protect our children from this psychiatric, pharmaceutical, educational-induced damage.”