The NAACP Speaks Out

 
On JULY 15th, delegates and National Board Members attending the 94th Annual NAACP Convention in Miami Beach, Florida, unanimously passed an historic resolution supporting The Child Safety Medication Act of 2003, proposed national legislation that will curb the coercive psychiatric drugging of schoolchildren.

Signed by NAACP President and CEO, Kweisi Mfume, and Board Chairman, Julian Bond, the NAACP resolution includes facts on psychiatric child drugging, such as:

1. Eight million children each year [in the United States]...are prescribed behavior and mind-altering psychiatric drugs for learning and attention difficulties.
2. There are documented incidents of highly negative consequences in which psychiatric drugs have been utilized for what are essentially problems of discipline which may be related to lack of academic success, and it has been suggested that recent incidents of school violence and other occasions of violence are the result of children being unnecessarily medicated by...psychotropic drugs.
3. Labeling a child with these "disorders" has led to school personnel coercing parents into accepting psychiatric diagnoses for their child's behavior or learning problems and insisting that parents place their child on psychiatric drugs....
4. African American students account for only 16% of the U.S. student population, yet they represent nearly a third (32%) of all students in programs for mild mental retardation. A New York study found that "minority boys" are 11 times more likely to be on mind-altering medications than is the general student body. The suicide rate among African-American males between the ages of 15 and 19 has risen 219% since 1964, around the same time stimulant drug use in school children began in earnest.