[N]o other class of medications in virtually all of medicine inspires more baseless fears, intentional disinformation, and wild beliefs as do the stimulants used to treat ADHD.
Interestingly, these fears are almost entirely an American phenomenon that hardly exists elsewhere in the world.
[H]aving ADHD lowers a person’s estimated life expectancy by 12.7 years.
From other articles on the site:
-
ADHD medication use lowers risk of death by 19%, risk of overdose by 50%, and it reduces hospitalizations
-
[T]he risk of substance abuse decreases substantially when [ADHD] patients are treated with stimulant medication
I suspect that the Scientologists were a large part of this push. Obviously they are vehemently anti-psychiatry and they certainly jumped on the anti-ADHD bandwagon with great gusto but I'm not sure whether or not they were lobbying but I feel like they were a large part of the cultural zeitgeist that claimed that ADHD meds were turning the children into drugged-out zombies.