ADD Drugs at School

I wonder why I have believed that drugs were a definite NO-NO at schools all across America? I suppose because I have read the stories about teenage girls being expelled for taking Midol, and other disiplinary actions against students using aspirin, cough syrup, and throat lozenges. I had no idea that schools permit prescription medications for attention deficit disorder, and they actually warehouse the drugs at the schools. To top it off, apparently, at least one of these drugs, Adderal, is addictive.

The Ann Arbor (Mich.) News reports that Marcus Burlingame, an assistant principal at West Middle School in Ypsilanti, Michigan, admitted stealing students' prescription drugs, to treat his addiction to the drugs. He supposedly had been prescribed the medicine for his own ADD disorder, and when he became addicted, he began scamming pills from the students' stash at school. I guess I really am a dinosaur, but this does not make any sense to me! Why would addictive drugs be given to teenagers at all? Why would these drugs be in such abundant supply at school as to tempt addicts? Why would parents allow their children to take medicine that others could tamper with?

Are children so different today that they cannot learn without these drugs? If that is the case, then why have they changed so in just one generation? Who is responsible for pushing these drugs? Is it the drug manufacturers? Is it the pediatricians and psychologists? Is it the parents or the children themselves? Or is it the school administrators? If it is the schools, why? Do they really want to help the children learn, or do they have another motive?