Tag Archives: overmedicating kids

Teacher sacked for refusing to remove ‘have you drugged your kids today’ bumper sticker

A teacher has been fired over her bumper sticker which mocked parents who mollycoddle their children. Tarah Ausburn put the ‘Have you drugged your kid today?’ sticker on her Toyota Prius in protest at what she claims is the overmedication of today’s children. She has 60 other such stickers on the car including ‘Recycle or die’ and ‘A clear conscience is a sign of a bad memory’. Five parents at Imagine Prep High School in Surprise, Arizona, objected to the suggestion that their children were on drugs and when they complained Ms Ausburn was asked to remove it or park her car off school grounds. She refused and was fired.
The incident has sparked a huge row over first Amendment rights with Ms Ausburn refusing to back down.

She told Arizona’s KPHO TV: ‘It’s kind of a criticism of us tending to over-medicate hyperactive kids who might not need those medications.’

Doctors draw payments from drug companies: Physicians say presentations they make are educational, but critics say the practice puts financial rewards ahead of patient care

Follow drug company money in Illinois, and it leads to the psychiatry department at Rush University Medical Center, a prominent headache clinic on the North Side of Chicago, a busy suburban urology practice and a psychiatric hospital accused of overmedicating kids.

In each of these settings, doctors are drawing an extra paycheck — worth tens of thousands of dollars a year or more — for speaking to other medical professionals about pharmaceutical products at company-sponsored, company-scripted events in Illinois and across the country.