MINORITIES TARGETED FOR SPECIAL EDUCATION AND PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS

 
A public service message from Citizens Commission on Human Rights International

Isaac Hayes, a longtime critic of the psychiatric drugging of children, says:

Children are the hope of our culture, whether Black, Hispanic, Native American, or any race. Do inner-city youth, antagonized by poverty, substandard inner-city education, unemployment and broken families, need drugs that will turn them violent? This battle is about mental slavery.

• In May 2003, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) unanimously passed a resolution supporting federal legislation to protect children from being forced onto psychiatric drugs in schools.
• In December 1999, the National Caucus of Black State Legislators unanimously passed a resolution that called for a national investigation into the use of all psychiatric drugs and their effects on children in this nation. This followed a Christian Science Monitor article reporting that a New York study had found minority boys [in New York] are 11 times more likely to be on [stimulant] medication than is the general student body.

Why are such resolutions needed?

• Eight million children each year (which is about 10% of the school age population) are prescribed behavior and mind-altering psychiatric drugs for so-called learning and attention difficulties.¹
• Often school psychiatrists or psychologists tell parents that their child suffers from a disorder affecting their ability to learncommonly called a Learning Disorder (LD). The disorder may also be labeled Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Parents have been betrayed into believing that drug treatment is the best solution for these.
• However, what they are not told is that there are numerous risks associated with prescription mind-altering drugs. For example, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) classifies Ritalin, one stimulant prescribed for ADHD, in the same category as opium, cocaine and morphine. Studies show that children who take these medications do not perform better academically. In fact, children who take these drugs fail just as many courses, and drop out of school just as often, as children who do not take the drugs.²
• These drugs are not like the routine medications that a medical doctor would prescribe for a cold or fever; they are potentially habit-forming and mind-altering, psychiatric drugs. Children can be drugged by first labeling their inability to read, as a disability requiring special education.

Next Page