The medicated generation

This wasn't supposed to happen here

[Reprinted from Issues & Views August 12, 2002]

What is there to think about a society that systematically drugs whole populations of its children, in order to cope with them? Is there a truth buried somewhere, that no one wants to acknowledge--perhaps a connection between the tens of thousands of divorced women and the multitude of illegitimate children--each trend an indication of homes bereft of husbands and fathers? Are the drugs that are now being foisted on assertive boys expected to play the disciplinary role of father, that "single moms" simply cannot play?

In a column by Douglas Montero in the New York Post (8/7/02), we read another horror story of the forced drugging of a grade school boy, by school officials. Michael Mozer, now 12 years old, who lives in Dutchess county in upstate New York, claims that educators at the Millbrook Elementary School regularly forced him to drink a "cocktail" of drugs that were intended to counteract his supposed symptoms of "attention deficit hyperactivity disorder" (ADHD). The drug not only calmed his active behavior, he says, they also made him psychotic, at which times he heard voices in his head.

Michael's mother, Patricia Weathers, claims that school officials warned that they would file a child abuse complaint against her to the state's Department of Children and Family Services, if she refused to give her consent to the drugging of her son. In 1997, when he was just a first-grader, the regimen of drugs began.

After two years of observing her son's erratic behavior (chewing on his clothes and paper, engaging in rambling talks with himself), she finally got up the nerve to demand an end to the drug routine. And, sure enough, the school system filed a "medical neglect/child abuse" complaint against her. Montero writes:

By the third grade, Michael was suffering from insomnia, lack of appetite and anti-social behavior, and suffered such anxiety he began chewing on his own shirt sleeves, collars and pencils. Once he even started gnawing on a test sheet. School officials allegedly told Weathers her son was bipolar and suffering from social anxiety.

They suggested more medicine--and this time the doctors prescribed a cocktail of Dextrostat, another version of Ritalin, and Paxil, an anti-anxiety drug. "They kept labeling him with disorders, not realizing the side effects of the drugs was making him act this way," Weathers said. "My son was becoming psychotic with these drugs . . . He was out of control."

Patricia Weathers is fighting back. She has formed an advocacy group for parents concerned about the coercive drugging of children, and she has engaged a lawyer to sue the school officials for the physical and mental damage done to Michael. Montero concludes, "The case is likely to be closely watched by educators statewide because it could determine whether public-school officials and pill-pushing psychiatrists are liable for the physical and mental damages that may occur when parents are coerced to medicate their kids."

One wonders if the next generation of parents will possess the volition or spirit to fight back against anything that legal authorities demand of them. Writing on LewRockwell.com, Gail Jarvis also raises this question. In "Brave New America," he describes the current "Medicated Generation," for whom psychotropic drugs have now become routine. He states, "To obtain a prescription for a psychotropic drug, you don’t need a diagnosis from a psychiatrist, your regular doctor will be happy to oblige you. And young children are popping these pills as regularly as their parents. In fact, drugging children seems to be replacing discipline."

Jarvis speculates on the kind of citizens that will result when large numbers are dependent on inhibitors, mood stabilizers and tranquilizers. "As the use of these medications becomes more widespread, a significant portion of the population could be reduced to a state of mellow docility wherein unsanctioned conduct by the State would seem unimportant." He envisions a grim future and predicts, "As the use of psychotropics continues to increase, the innate resistance to loss of individual liberty will decline as the differences between right and wrong become blurred. This trend should trouble us but for lovers of big government it is like manna from heaven."

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