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Drugs like Ritalin and Adderall help kids with Attention Deficit Disorder to concentrate, but some kids are passing them around to their friends. 
Teachers Memorial Middle School in Norwich.
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Norwich middle school kids hospitalized after sharing ADD drug

NORWICH, Conn., March 16 – It’s a drug not being sold on the streets or being dealt in the neighborhoods, but it may be in your kids’ school.  Drugs like Ritalin and Adderall help kids with Attention Deficit Disorder to concentrate.  But, police say some kids are taking their pills and giving them to friends who don’t need them.

     Norwich Police are investigating the incident which they say involved eighth grade students at Teachers Memorial Middle School.  They say some kids were passing the drug out and in the end three children ended up in the hospital.  “Obviously the reaction was one of concern and determining why these children actually took this type of a pill,” Norwich Police Sgt. James Daigle said.  “The Adderall is an amphetamine and it is addictive if abused.  Certainly no parent wants to deal with that kind of thing,” he said.

     Sgt. Daigle says parents should control and supervise the medication if their kids are taking it.  He also suggests parents talk to doctors and pharmacists about all of its effects.
     Now parents are trying to figure out how to keep this from happening again.  “I think the parents should know what the kids are on and how they’re taking it.  It shouldn’t be in the medicine cabinet, it should be locked.  I think it’s the parents fault,” Maggie Allard of Norwich said.
     Parents are talking about the war on drugs at the middle school.  It’s not street drugs they’re worried about, it’s the prescription drug Adderall.

     “A school nurse needs to be dispensing it and it needs to be controlled in that way, not given to the child to take to school,” Debbie Chang of Preston said.  That’s apparently what happened on Wednesday.  Three students were sent to the hospital.  Police say they ended up there after taking Adderall.  It’s used to treat ADD, but authorities say a student brought it from home, passed it onto some friends who passed it on to more people.
     “They want to feel elated.  They want to feel good.  They want to feel speedy, they want to feel like they have energy and that’s what it does for them,” Child Psychiatrist Dr. Allan Jacobs. 
     Teachers Memorial Middle school does have a medication policy in place.  After parental consent, only nurses are allowed to give medication to students. 
     “They shouldn’t be controlling it.  The kids shouldn’t have control of it themselves.  Parents shouldn’t be giving it to them,” Paula Watson of Norwich said.  Parents say they’re not sure what went wrong at the school nor what the solution is.  “They’ve got to come up with some kind of a solution that will benefit both.  They can’t just keep pushing it off on one and not the other,” Jeff Betz of Norwich said.

     The three students who ended up at the hospital were treated and released.  The school’s principal declined to talk to NBC 30 on camera and said the investigation is ongoing.  He also confirmed the pills did come from the home of a student and that suspending that student is under consideration.
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