The controversy over the millions of our nation's children being put on drugs for subjectively diagnosed "learning disorders" widens with new facts about the abuse of prescription stimulants. 

A recent CESAR Fax from the Center for Substance Abuse Research at the University of Maryland says that through the latest national survey on drug abuse approximately three to five percent of high school and college students have used drugs such as Ritalin® and Adderall® illegally.  The number is more than three times higher than the percentage of persons 12 or older that reported using cocaine in the past month.

This should come as no surprise since the highly addictive drugs fall in the same Schedule II class of controlled substances as cocaine and share similar properties.  The abuse of these prescription drugs has increased over the years and they have a black market value of somewhere between $2 and $20 per pill.  Abuse can result in agitation, tremors, euphoria, increased or irregular heart rate, hypertension, sleeplessness, loss of appetite, manic or psychotic episodes, paranoid delusions and hallucinations.

Psychiatrists and pharmaceutical manufacturers insist that the drugs are safe for their intended use, which is to subdue lively children.  These drugs get them high, and similar to a meth addict, they become keenly interested in a task at hand through the artificially heightened alertness.

The dangers of these drugs and the alarming number of children that are either legally or illegally addicted to them have attracted the attention of congressional leaders.  In fact, several states have now made it illegal for schools to suggest that students be put on drugs.  Much of this concern has to do with the fact that it is a repeating pattern of drugs being approved for one use or another, finding out they're addictive and damaging and then making them illegal, such as cocaine, heroin and ecstasy.