By Paul Bremmer
Workers on drugs? Blame schools, says international educator and journalist Alex Newman.
Abuse of drugs such as those designed to combat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder has graduated from the schools into the workforce, Newman tells WND. He says it's because the prescription drugs in public schools simply follow students into the work force.
"For one, the school system has promoted the notion that drug use to enhance performance and deal with quack diagnoses is not just acceptable, but necessary for many individuals," Newman told WND. "It must be remembered that these drugs are actually powerful amphetamines with long-term and potentially permanent side effects."
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In an April 18 article , The New York Times reported "dozens of people in a wide spectrum of professions" admitted they and their co-workers had abused stimulants such as Adderall in order to improve job performance. The director of one substance-abuse treatment facility for women said her organization was seeing more addiction cases than in the two previous years, especially among 25-to-45-year-olds.
The article reported that most users said they obtained their pills by faking symptoms of ADHD, and their doctors wrote them prescriptions without properly evaluating them.
Newman, coauthor of "Crimes of the Educators," doesn't believe ADHD is a naturally occurring disorder. He and coauthor Samuel Blumenfeld argue public schools have induced the syndrome in children by teaching them to read the wrong way.
"There can be no question that the government schools and the quack methodologies of instruction – the whole word method, for example – are largely to blame for the symptoms that psychiatrists and the education establishment have labeled ADD and ADHD," Newman said.
"As we show in our book, teaching kids to read using the methods now being used in government schools literally results in physical damage to the brain. It gets wired wrong. Modern science has confirmed this with brain scans," he said.
Whatever the reason, more and more American children are being diagnosed with ADHD today. According to the CDC , 7.8 percent of all children ages 4-17 received an ADHD diagnosis in 2003, and that number grew to 9.5 percent in 2007 and 11 percent in 2011. The average age of a diagnosed child is seven.
Schools and medical providers have attempted to combat ADHD through behavioral therapies, but also through medication. In 2011, 69 percent of children with an ADHD diagnosis were receiving medication for the disorder, with the result being that 6 percent of all American children were taking ADHD drugs.
"By having the government school system promote these diagnoses and drugs as a remedy for problems with students, the schools and parents are able to shift the responsibility, but at great cost to children," Newman said. "This then results in adults believing that the use of these powerful drugs in the workplace is also acceptable."
That seems to be the case. The New York Times reported roughly 2.6 million U.S. adults received ADHD medication in 2012, a 53 percent increase since 2008. Among those aged 26-34, ADHD drug use nearly doubled.
And the reason they abuse these drugs is the same reason many baseball players have used steroids – they want to enhance their job performance, not to get ahead of the competition, but to keep up with the competition. One young woman who owns a health technology company, and who admitted to abusing Adderall, told the Times there's a culture of stimulant abuse at most of the companies she knows with ambitious young workers.
She said, "It is necessary – necessary for survival of the best and the smartest and highest-achieving people."
Newman told WND young workers may not feel the need to resort to drugs if their schools were actually teaching them valuable, transferable skills.
"If the government school system was adequately preparing students for the workforce rather than deliberately dumbing them down, I have no doubt that the prevalence of amphetamine abuse in workplaces and colleges would be far lower than it is," Newman said.
He continued, “The miseducation system is handicapping children, and when they reach adulthood, they feel that abusing these dangerous psychotropic drugs will help them deal with the handicap. They have also been taught to think that this is a real and legitimate solution, when it's not – it is a dangerous habit that will lead to even more serious future problems."
Lee Hieb, M.D., author of "Surviving the Medical Meltdown: Your Guide to Living Through the Disaster of Obamacare," cautions young drug addicts that an economic collapse is likely to befall the United States soon, so they had better kick their addictions now.
"At such a time in the future, you will need all your wits focused on day-to-day survival," she pointed out. "You cannot afford to be 'jonesing,' as you are suddenly forced into abstinence from your habit. It is far better to stop now in a controlled environment than to suddenly be forced to withdraw from the habit due to collapse of the economy."
Newman believes all the stimulant use and abuse among school kids and young adults is ultimately pointless because it doesn't solve the problem of ADHD.
"America needs to deal with the root cause of these issues," Newman said. "As we document thoroughly in our book, that is the fact that government schools are purposely dumbing down kids. No amount of drugs will be able to remedy this crisis."
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