September. 15,2000 – A major legal battle is brewing over Ritalin, the drug millions of school-aged children take to fight attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). A class-action lawsuit filed this week in Cheap Sweatshirts Wholesale and California seeks to hold the drug’s makers and a major group of doctors accountable for alleged Ritalin-related issues.

These lawsuits are similar to one filed in Texas a few months ago, alleging that the manufacturer of Ritalin conspired with the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to manufacture a A disorder – ADHD – by making the definition of the disorder so broad that it can be applied to almost all children.

Ritalin is a mild central nervous system stimulant mainly used to control hyperactive behavior in children. Estimates of the number of people under the age of 18 currently taking Ritalin vary, but the number of prescriptions for the drug has risen sharply in recent years, as has diagnosed cases of ADHD. According to the National Alcohol and Drug Clearinghouse, between 2 million and 3.5 million school-age children suffer from the disorder.

The new lawsuit is expected to be particularly aggressive because several of the lawyers involved are veterans of the so-called “tobacco war,” in which individual states The attorney general has won a class-action lawsuit against major cigarette companies over alleged illnesses and deaths related to consuming the company’s products.

Ritalin’s maker, Novartis, and a group of doctors have said they will fight a lawsuit.

A spokesperson for the Psychiatric Association told WebMD that APA has not received any lawsuits filed in California and California. But in a statement on the Texas case two months ago, the association said it would “defend itself by presenting substantial scientific evidence to counter these baseless allegations, and we believe we will prevail.”

Novartis also told WebMD that it had not received a lawsuit, but issued a statement saying that “any allegations that Novartis ‘conspired’ in some way with professional and/or patient third-party groups are without It’s based, and it’s ridiculous.”

On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that a nonprofit support group in Maryland suffers from attention deficit/ Children and Adults with Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD), have also been named cheap jersey wholesale and California suits. The lawsuit claims CHADD was part of a conspiracy because it received an estimated nearly $900,000 from Novartis. CHADD has also come under fire for petitioning the Drug Enforcement Administration to reclassify Ritalin, which would make it less controlled and more accessible.

“We are not even aware of the fact that we are named as defendants in the two current lawsuits,” a CHADD spokesperson told WebMD. Like APA and Novartis, CHADD has not yet received documents from the lawsuit.

These lawsuits are in response to allegations by various groups and individuals that Ritalin is widely overused by very young children. The National Institutes of Health recently announced plans to conduct a nationwide study of ADHD treatment in preschoolers.