Adderall Abuse at Lower Merion High School Is the Focus of a New York Times Piece


A recent piece published in the New York Times focuses (see what we did there?) on the rampant abuse of Adderall and other “good-grade drugs” amongst high school students. One of the people interviewed for the story was a senior at Lower Merion High School who says he sells prescription drugs to classmates:

“They’re the A students, sometimes the B students, who are trying to get good grades,” said one senior at Lower Merion High School in Ardmore, a Philadelphia suburb, who said he makes hundreds of dollars a week selling prescription drugs, usually priced at $5 to $20 per pill, to classmates as young as freshmen. “They’re the quote-unquote good kids, basically.”

Douglas Young, a spokesperson for the Lower Merion School District, was also interviewed for the piece:

“It’s time for a serious wake-up call,” Mr. Young said. “Straight A’s and high SAT scores look great on paper, but they aren’t reflective measures of a student’s health and well-being. We need to better understand the pressures and temptations, and ultimately we need to embrace new definitions of student success. For many families and communities, that’s simply not happening.”

The dealer also went on to talk about how he gets the drugs he sells to his fellow students:

“I lie to my psychiatrist — I expressed feelings I didn’t really have, knowing the consequences of it,” he said, standing in a park a few miles from the high school. “I tell the doctor, ‘I find myself very distracted, and I feel this really deep pain inside, like I’m anxious all the time,’ or something like that.”

He coughed out a chuckle and added proudly, “Generally, if you keep playing the angsty-teen role, you’ll get something good.”