Utah Lawmaker Wants Parents in on Decisions to Medicate School Kids
by Jim Brown
February 2, 2005
(AgapePress) - A parental rights bill in the Utah legislature requires parents to consent to medication given to their children at school.State Representative Mike Morley's parental consent bill is similar to legislation that passed the 2002 Utah legislature but was subsequently vetoed. The legislator is proposing the measure because he is troubled by cases in which teachers or administrators have required that children be given Ritalin or other psychotropic drugs as a condition of attending school.
Some federal legislation has been passed to curb this practice, but Morley says it does not go far enough. One problem, he notes, is that the federal statute "only lists scheduled medications and a specific medication."
What the Utah lawmaker hopes to do with his bill is keep schools from ignoring or overriding parents' input in determining what is in their children's best interests. "Basically, we're just saying that we want parents involved in a decision that would lead to medicating their children," he says.
Moreley suspects that many children who merely have a propensity for restlessness at school are being overmedicated. "We're just looking at this as a safeguard," he says, "and trying to ensure that parents are also involved in decision making that is going to impact the child over a lifetime. Oftentimes these decisions are made for convenience -- or at least, they can be made for convenience."
The bill the concerned state representative is proposing would also prevent the Utah Department of Children and Families (DCFS) from removing children from their homes solely on grounds that their parents refuse to medicate them. Morley says he is continuing to work with DCFS to accomplish his legislative objective while mitigating their concerns.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
