The popularity of these drugs is easy to understand when one considers their "efficiency"; and it offers millions of dollars to the pharmaceutical industry. In the United States in 2001, pharmaceutical companies made more than $600 million in profits just on stimulant drugs used for attention deficit disorders, and exposing, in the words of Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD, in a letter to Surgeon General Janet Reno, April 15, 1998:

...the single biggest health care fraud in US history is the misrepresentation of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder as an actual disease, and the drugging of millions of entirely normal American children.

Private philanthropic organizations that commonly receive huge donations from the pharmaceutical industry; and federal agencies and government sponsors prefer to work with and fund superficial, quick-fix approaches.

---