So now that we have talked about these drugs, lets talk about the problem here. If you haven’t read Study Drugs 1 and 2, definitely read those first so you have some idea what I am talking about.
Ever since elementary school, I have known about drugs to treat ADHD. Growing up and going to elementary school in the late 1990′s and early 2000′s I was raised in a time where ADD and ADHD were a pretty popular diagnosis for kids my age. I couldn’t tell you how many kids were being treated for these diseases, but it was more than I cared to count at the time. Thanks to the medications, it was pretty hard to distinguish between the ADHD kids and the kids who didn’t have it, but there were still those kids who you knew were being treated, just because you knew.
For my age group, Adderall and Ritalin were pretty loose terms. All the way through middle school it seemed like I couldn’t go a week without someone talking about how they got put on one of these drugs. It became such a popular diagnosis that it was truly not hard to get ADHD pills for dirt cheap if you knew the right kids (but even though I knew the right kids, I didn’t have any desire to do these drugs). As all these ADHD kids get older and go to college like me, the prescriptions come with them. Doctors are not particularly hesitant to keep a patient on these medications, even if they don’t really need it that badly.
Soon the leftover pills are being sold during finals week at premium prices, and to a broke college student, that is easy money. Pills that are essentially free to them, or at least not particularly expensive, can now be sold for top dollar to gullible freshman and desperate seniors alike, and the problem is that there is almost no easy way to stop it. There are entire task forces and special programs to try to take these drugs off the streets, but that just means the dealers have to step up their game.
I talked to a dealer recently that is a close friend of mine. He isn’t your typical drug dealer, he considers himself a classy drug lord. He doesn’t sell weed or meth, he deals in prescriptions and pills. I will tell you about what he thinks about study drugs next time. Check back soon!
