Protect Children from Coerced Drugging in Public Schools: E-Action on Child Medication Safety Act, HR 1790

Tell your Representative to support H.R. 1790, The Child Medication Safety Act that will put a stop to coerced drugging in schools.

EdAction

August 22, 2005

We know that:

1) Mental illness is over-diagnosed; especially in children

2) Psychotropic medications are over-prescribed.

3) Parents are being coerced to force their children to take psychotropic medications.

4) The diagnostic criteria for mental illnesses are vague social constructs, as admitted by experts in the psychiatric field.

5) Many studies, some of them kept from physicians and the public for years, have shown that these medications are not at all effective in the long term.

6) The psychotropic medications, both on and off the controlled substances list, are far from benign; their side effects are rarely adequately explained to parents; and there are no studies defining their effects on the developing nervous systems of growing children, especially those under the age of five years.

7) No psychiatric illness is caused by naturally occurring deficiencies of any psychiatric drug, but there are many reasons that children may have symptoms of mental illness that are overlooked by both schools and physicians that can be corrected without psychiatric drugs.

Therefore, we must take steps to protect our children and change the culture. An important first step is to stop parents from being coerced into putting their children on psychotropic drugs in order for them to attend public schools.

More information on this bill is available on the Action Alert link.

Congress reconvenes after Labor Day. Take advantage of the time still remaining of the Congressional summer break to urge your member -- by telephone, mail or in person -- to support HR 1790. If your member is already a co-sponsor, please thank him or her. To find your member of Congress, click here. You may access the address, telephone, and fax information of your member of Congress by simply typing in your zip code. Telephone calls are very effective. Faxes are also effective for getting letters into the office. Letters by mail to the state offices are valuable, but mail to the Washington, DC offices are not delivered in a reasonable time.

While you're contacting your member, don't forget to mention Cong. Ron Paul's Parental Consent Act, HR 181 (See our May Action Alert), which would prohibit any federal funds from being used to establish or implement any universal or mandatory mental health screening program. It would require that a parent's refusal to consent to mental health screening programs could not be a basis of a charge of child abuse or education neglect.

Thank you for taking this "end of the summer" federal action, for the children and for the future of our country.