According to an article in the New York Times, pressure over grades and college admission competition is driving private school students to abuse prescription stimulants. Alan Schwarz, who wrote the story, said the Times contacted over 200 students, school officials, parents, and others—and 40 agreed to be interviewed.
One student told the reporter, “Everyone in school either has a prescription or has a friend who does.”
The medicines in question are primarly those used to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD. The names may be familiar—Adderall, Vyvanse, Ritalin, and Focalin, to name a few. The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) classifies these as Class 2 controlled substances, the same classification as cocaine and morphine.
Kids are not taking these drugs for the sake of a high or to “let loose.” Rather, they are taking them to get better grades, manage their work load, and focus. One student, Schwarz writes, demanded that her social worker get her an Adderall prescription or “I’ll just get it from the kids at school.” Another student said he makes hundreds of dollars a week selling the pills. “They are the quote-unquote-good kids basically,” he said.
Another student, considered a “star student” carrying five AP classes, who participates in sports and several extracurricular activities, got pills from another student with a prescription. She bartered for her pills by tutoring or proofreading for students with prescriptions.
“People would have never looked at me and thought I used drugs like that—I wasn’t that kid,” she said. Now an Ivy Leaguer, she says she still uses stimulants periodically. “It wasn’t a hard decision. Do I want only four hours of sleep and be a mess, and then underperform on the test and then in field hockey? Or make the teacher happy and the coach happy and get good grades, get into a good college and make my parents happy?”
This is not a new problem. According to a Washington Post report, more than 7 million Americans are estimated to have abused ADHD medication. In 2006, the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence published a study drawing that conclusion, including data from a 2002 national survey of about 67,000 households.
Substantial numbers of abusers are teens and young people, and many are “seeking to boost academic and professional performance,” according to doctors.
“We live in a highly competitive society, and you want to get the top grades, and you know your colleagues are taking stimulants and you feel pressured,” said Dr. Nora Volkow, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). “As a child, you have multiple friends who are being treated with stimulant medications. You get the sense that these are good. The message we are getting cannot be over-emphasized—it has become something routine.”
For more information on the affects of stimulant ADHD medications on the brain and their role in the treatment of ADHD, read the NIDA article here.
“It's time for a serious wake-up call,” said Douglas Young, a spokesman for the Philadelphia-area Lower Merion School District. “Straight As and high SAT scores look great on paper, but they aren’t reflective measures of a student’s health and well-being. We need to understand the pressures and temptations, and ultimately we need to embrace new definitions of student success. For many families and communities, that’s simply not happening.”
Additional resources of interest
ADHD-Drug Abuse Popular on Oregon Campuses; University Health Officials Fight Back OregonLive.Com
Smart Moves Smart Choices Program of the National School Nurses Association
Monitoring the Future: National Results on Adolescent Drug Use Study from the Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan
Additional resources for ISM Consortium Gold Members
Ideas & Perspectives Vol. 36 No. 6 Scheduling the Upper School Calendar
Ideas & Perspectives Vol. 35 No. 4 Scheduling and the Harried Teen
