S. 4041 is a bill will protect children from the mental health industry under the influence of, with financial ties to, the prescription drug industry. Its sponsoring senators: Inhofe and Coburn.
September 26, 2006 on the Senate floor: Mr. INHOFE spoke (for himself and Mr. Coburn):
S. 4041. A bill to protect children and their parents from being coerced into administering a controlled substance in order to attend school, and
for other purposes; read the first time.
Mr. INHOFE. President, I rise today, along with my colleague, TOM COBURN, to proudly introduce the Child Medication Safety Act, a bill to protect children and their parents from being coerced into administering a controlled substance or psychotropic drug in order to attend a school. The text of my bill exactly matches the text of H.R. 1790, which passed the House on November 16, 2006 by a vote of 407 to 12….
Help STOP mental screening of healthy children whose vulnerability is being exploited by those who have financial interests in increasing the use of psychotropic drugs. Schools have a financial incentive to label children as having a “mental disability” –they get extra federal funding.
Children who are labeled as ADHD are being forced to swallow toxic mind-altering drugs, such as Adderall, whose label now carry Black Box
warnings.
“AMPHETAMINES HAVE A HIGH POTENTIAL FOR ABUSE. ADMINISTRATION OF AMPHETAMINES FOR PROLONGED PERIODS OF TIME MAY LEAD TO DRUG DEPENDENCE.”
“MISUSE OF AMPHETAMINE MAY CAUSE SUDDEN DEATH AND SERIOUS CARDIOVASCULAR ADVERSE EVENTS.”
See: http://www.fda.gov/cder/foi/label/2006/011522s034s037,021303s013lbl.pdf:
But those label warnings are NOT seen by parents.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that children prescribed psychostimulants–such as, Ritalin, Concerta and
Adderall–suffered serious adverse events that landed them in hospital emergency rooms!
http://www.psych.org/edu/other_res/lib_archives/archives/890004.pdf
FDA drug safety specialists have acknowledged that stimulants trigger hallucinations in children
See: Review of Postmarketing Safety Data. MEMORANDUM RE: Psychiatric Adverse
Events Associated with Drug Treatment of ADHD, March 3, 2006.
Worse yet, children are being subjected to harmful psychotropic drug cocktails that have NEVER been TESTED for safety or efficacy in either
adults or children.
Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
veracare@ahrp.org
URGE THE SENATE TO PROTECT CHILDREN FROM FORCED DRUGGING!
The lame duck Congress has decided not to deal with the federal budget bills including the mental health screening issues
<http://www.edwatch.org/updates06/111006-mhtw.htm> . They plan instead to do a “continuing resolution” which will fund these programs at their current levels until February when the Democrats will then have to deal with the budget.
Since they do not have to pass the individual spending bills, they can work
on other things. Of the bills they could pass in their last week, one that
should be a “no-brainer” is the Child Medication Safety Act (HR 1790). The
bill was passed <http://www.edaction.org/2005/111805-cmsa.htm> for the
second Congress in a row by the US House by the overwhelming majority of
407-12 <http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2005/roll590.xml> in November of 2005.
Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) introduced this common sense bill in September
of 2006 right before the election.
This legislation protects families from being coerced into administering
psychotropic medications that are on the controlled substances list to their
children in order to attend school. These are the Ritalin class of drugs
used to treat ADHD, the most common psychiatric label given to children. It
is identical to the legislation that passed in 2004 to protect students in
special education from this same kind of forced drugging. The bill that
would have protected all K-12 students died in the last session of Congress
due to a blockade by Senator Edward Kennedy
<http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/07/02/kennedy_ties_up_drug_
bill/> (D-MA) at the behest of pharmaceutical and psychiatric groups.
This bill is supported by a broad spectrum of groups. The NAACP
<http://www.naacp.org/programs/bureau-dc/109_legislative_priorities.pdf>
(p.22) promoted this bill as part of its legislative priorities list for the
Congress about to end. A variety of consumer, professional and grassroots
political groups
<http://www.libertycoalition.net/sites/libertycoalition.net/files/CMSA –
Liberty Coaltition.doc> all support this bill.
Pediatrician Dr. Karen Effrem has presented testimony
<http://edaction.org/2003/030827.htm> to Congress on this bill. She found
that the medical literature demonstrates that these medications are
overused, ineffective, and have dangerous, if not fatal, side effects. Most
importantly, she reported that the “disorders” these drugs are supposed to
treat are admitted by experts to have no scientific basis — that there are
many other reasons for behavior and learning disorders that do not require
medication. Children have died <http://www.ritalindeath.com/> from the
dangers of these drugs forced on them by the schools.
Since that testimony was presented, study after study has appeared
continuing to show the dangers and lack of effectiveness of these
medications. For instance, all in 2006:
The Oregon Drug Effectiveness Review Project
<http://www.ohsu.edu/drugeffectiveness/reports/documents/ADHD Final Report
Update 1.pdf> , analyzed 2287 pieces of research — virtually every
investigation ever done on ADHD drugs up to 2006 – to reach its conclusions:
it found no evidence to support the claims about these drugs’ safety,
effectiveness, or the legitimacy of the ADHD diagnosis.
The FDA strengthened its warnings
<https://ahrp.org/cms/content/view/323/28/> on these drugs, finally
acknowledging that these drugs cause dependency and addiction,
hallucinations, psychosis, and heart problems, including sudden death.
A study <https://ahrp.org/cms/content/view/364/31/> of ADHD drugs in
preschoolers released by the National Institutes of Mental Health revealed
that, “About 40 percent of children developed side effects and roughly 11
percent dropped out because of problems including irritability, weight loss,
insomnia and slowed growth.”
ACTION:
Please call Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist at 202-224-3344 and ask him to
put the Child Medication Safety Act (HR 1790) on the unanimous consent
calendar (the list of non-controversial bills) and pass it this week.
Please call your two US Senators
<http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm> and
ask them to support this bill and urge the same with Senator Frist. This
bill is supported by groups on all points on the political spectrum, from
the NAACP to Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum.
With all of the new research on the dangers of the Ritalin class of drugs
and given that there is ongoing funding for mental health screening of all
ages of children, the basic protections for K-12 students in this bill that
have already passed in the special education law should be passed without a
moment’s hesitation.
Ask these elected officials whose interests they will support – those of
parents and children, including minority children, or those of the
psychopharmaceutical and education cartel?
Contact: Dr. Karen Effrem, Board member of AHRP
kreffrem@pro-ns.net 763-476-4884 (home)