Published: November 1, 1996

ADDicted

One afternoon last May, hundreds of schoolchildren in Peoria, Illinois, rallied against drug abuse at a park just outside of the city. Wearing scarlet "Dare To Say No To Drugs" T-shirts, they celebrated Drug Abuse Resistance Education day--DARE day--with volleyball, tug of war, and soda pop. Cars in the parking lot, watched over by cops on horseback, were plastered with DARE bumper stickers. In the schools during the year, each class had its own DARE police officer who regularly volunteered to teach lessons on the horrors of drugs. Yet, in this most conservative of Midwestern cities, somewhere between 5 percent and 8 percent of the schoolchildren take, with the school district's blessing, a powerful stimulant to help them get through each day.

Eleven-year-old Brent Shipley is one of them. At the age of 5, Brent was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. Now, every morning, after a heaping bowl of cereal, he washes down with his milk a 20-milligram time-release tablet of Ritalin to keep him calm...