<p>Are kids being prosecuted for dealing their Adderall? And if they need it so badly to function, how is it possible that so many of them have pills to spare? Or did they not really need it after all?</p>
<p>If you doubt whether my kid needs to function I invite you to spend a few hours with her when she’s forgotten to take her meds–poster child for “it’s a good thing your head is attached to your body, or…”</p>
<p>@Sudsie it is not kids like yours who are selling their pills, most likely.</p>
<p>@mathmomvt, my kid needs them too much to ever consider selling them, even if she was so inclined which she isn’t. 
But I know how frequently know they are available out there…</p>
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<p>This is exactly what I have always wondered. I figured that there were some kids out there functioning in a marginal state because of the lure of selling them. As well as some who doctor-shopped for the diagnosis to get the extra time and so forth. (A minority, I’m sure.)</p>
<p>I bet there are kids who skip the pills on the weekend even if they need them to function during the week. Also kids with ADHD do forget to take their pill sometimes, so they may end up with 1 or 2 extras left at the end of the month.</p>
<p>Is the question where are drug dealers getting drugs? I actually asked my kid this question and his answer was, “I don’t know. Where do they get heroin, cocaine or pot? But, it’s readily available if you ask the right people.” This is not a couple of ADHD kids selling a few pills to a friend. It’s a giant business. And, there is no sense in pretending that it’s hard to get a prescription for uneeded meds. It’s pretty simple.</p>
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<p>My d occasionally skips her pills on the weekend (or during school breaks) when she doesn’t have homework and doesn’t plan on driving. Her prescription is just for 30 days w/no refill. She must see (or talk to) her doctor for a med check each month and get a new prescription and have it filled. The extra pills from days when she doesn’t take her pills cover the days when either she or her doctor is away and she’s unable to get a new prescription and have it filled. </p>
<p>Romani’s lumping of adderrall with energy drinks pretty much sums it up. This is considered a study drug these days and abuse is rampant. It’s also widely over-prescribed. Does anyone really think that half the students in your average elementary school have a medical problem that requires medication? I don’t. </p>
<p>Half is an overstatement, but even the numbers below seem awfully high and it seems to me that people are way too quick to be drugging kids when they can’t sit still in 1st grade. From the CDC:</p>
<p>" Approximately 11% of children 4-17 years of age (6.4 million) have been diagnosed with ADHD as of 2011.
The percentage of children with an ADHD diagnosis continues to increase, from 7.8% in 2003 to 9.5% in 2007 and to 11.0% in 2011.
Rates of ADHD diagnosis increased an average of 3% per year from 1997 to 2006 [Read article] and an average of approximately 5% per year from 2003 to 2011.
Boys (13.2%) were more likely than girls (5.6%) to have ever been diagnosed with ADHD.
The average age of ADHD diagnosis was 7 years of age, but children reported by their parents as having more severe ADHD were diagnosed earlier.
Prevalence of ADHD diagnosis varied substantially by state, from a low of 5.6% in Nevada to a high of 18.7% in Kentucky.</p>
<p>Parents were also asked about whether their child was taking medication for ADHD. The results show that:</p>
<pre><code>The prevalence of children 4-17 years of age taking ADHD medication increased from 4.8% in 2007 to 6.1% in 2011
More US children were receiving ADHD treatment in 2011 compared to 2007; however, as many as 17.5% of children with current ADHD were not receiving either medication for ADHD or mental health counseling in 2011.
In 2011, geographic variability in the percent of children taking medication for ADHD ranged from a low of 2% in Nevada to a high of 10.4% in Louisiana.
</code></pre>
<p>"Half is an overstatement, but even the numbers below seem awfully high and it seems to me that people are way too quick to be drugging kids when they can’t sit still in 1st grade. "</p>
<p>I have no dog in this fight (no ADD, no family members with it) but nothing you’ve cited here “proves” that people are “way too quick to be drugging kids when they can’t sit still in 1st grade.” You don’t know what the “natural” level of ADD is in the population. You’re just assuming it’s low. You also don’t know how many kids might have it who are falling through cracks and not being diagnosed. </p>
<p>This is an area of interest to me - I do research on drug (ab)use. I also used to work in res life :D</p>
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<p>If they get caught, yes. They most often don’t get caught. It also depends on the individual school’s policy towards drug use. Sometimes drug use can get a kid a warning, but <em>selling</em> drugs is a different story. They don’t just sell it, either; they offer it for free to close friends.</p>
<p>Some of them don’t need it. Some kids with ADHD coach their friends how to act in doctor’s offices in order to get the prescription. Other kids look it up on the Internet and find out the symptoms, then exhibit those symptoms at the doctor. Some kids get more than one month’s supply and refill the Rx early (new Rx restrictions make that harder, but it wasn’t as difficult to do some time ago). And yes, some kids skip doses on certain days so they can sell them.</p>
<p>The energy drink mention is interesting, because there’s some evidence that college students are mixing Adderall with energy drinks and/or caffeine to stay awake and/or “focus” so they can study. Pop an Adderall, drink a Red Bull, study like crazy through the night, take a test at 8 am.</p>
<p>From talking to students I’ve gotten the sense that it’s ubiquitous and considered normal. Adderall has the sheen of ‘safe’ because it’s a prescription drug, so many students reason that even if it’s not prescribed to them it can’t be all that bad, right? I’ve been horrified when students have told me what kinds of things they’ve mixed together, and they don’t always get why I’m surprised.</p>
<p>What juillet said. It’s ubiquitous and considered normal at a lot of schools. We know a kid who went to Princeton and apparently it’s very common there -and probably is at schools with a very highly competitive environment and a lot of upper-middle-class kids. I have a very intelligent relative who was kicked out of college for dealing his (prescribed) Ritalin which then segued into other drugs and he ended up an opiate addict. Incredibly sad.</p>
<p>My D is prescribed one of the less-easy-to-abuse ADD meds, and this has always been a concern for us. Will people ask her for it at college? Will it just be so normalized that she won’t think that’s a big deal? We have had many, many discussions as a family and with her psychiatrist prior to even starting the meds, about this issue, and I hope she will always make the right choices. </p>
<p>@Pizzagirl, it’s fine to disagree with my opinion, but will you please refrain from making up quotes and putting them in my mouth. Where did I say that anything “proves” that people are way too quick to drug? I said “it seems to me”. That isn’t a claim of proof by any stretch of anyone’s imagination except yours. It’s a statement of my personal opinion.</p>
<p>The reason I think people are way too quick to drug is that I think the expectations on how long kids can sit still and focus in the early grades are too high for many kids. But this doesn’t mean the kid has a problem that needs medication. I’m not an expert on ADHD, but my understanding is that the drugs are alleviating symptoms and are not any kind of cure. How much do we know about the long term effects on the developing brain of these drugs? Doesn’t it make more sense to bring back PE/recess (and make sure they are really exercising in PE), give the kids a long enough lunch that they can go outside and get a few minutes of activity as well, and get rid of those long blocks for younger kids etc. </p>
<p>On one of the other threads up, there’s a discussion of the testing kindergarteners must undergo in Florida these days. The FAIR test apparently takes 35 minutes, but often up to an hour to administer. Is it reasonable to expect all 5 year olds to sit still and focus their best for that long? So the kids who can’t get medicated? </p>
<p>I’m not denying there can be problems and that some kids would benefit from medication. But this seems like an area where we are trying to squeeze kids into a very unnatural situation and then declare that anyone who can’t adapt well is ill and needs to be medicated. I find this pretty scary, actually.</p>
<p>If we take the attitude that it’s OK to medicate 10% of our 1st graders to improve school performance, is it any wonder that college kids see it as no big deal?</p>