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CNN
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At some middle and high schools in the United States, 1 in 4 teens report they’ve abused prescription stimulants for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder during the year prior, a new study found.

“This is the first national study to look at the nonmedical use of prescription stimulants by students in middle and high school, and we found a tremendous, wide range of misuse,” said lead author Sean Esteban McCabe, director of the Center for the Study of Drugs, Alcohol, Smoking and Health at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

“In some schools there was little to no misuse of stimulants, while in other schools more than 25% of students had used stimulants in nonmedical ways,” said McCabe, who is also a professor of nursing at the University of Michigan School of Nursing. “This study is a major wake-up call.”

Nonmedical uses of stimulants can include taking more than a normal dose to get high, or taking the medication with alcohol or other drugs to boost a high, prior studies have found.

Students also overuse medications or “use a pill that someone gave them due to a sense of stress around academics — they are trying to stay up late and study or finish papers,” said pediatrician Dr. Deepa Camenga, associate director of pediatric programs at the Yale Program in Addiction Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut.

“We know this is happening in colleges. A major takeaway of the new study is that misuse and sharing of stimulant prescription medications is happening in middle and high schools, not just college,” said Camenga, who was not involved with the study.

Published Tuesday in the journal JAMA Network Open, the study analyzed data collected between 2005 and 2020 by Monitoring the Future, a federal survey that has measured drug and alcohol use among secondary school students nationwide each year since 1975.

In the data set used for this study, questionnaires were given to more than 230,000 teens in eighth, 10th and 12th grades in a nationally representative sample of 3,284 secondary schools.

Schools with the highest rates of teens using prescribed ADHD medications were about 36% more likely to have students misusing prescription stimulants during the past year, the study found. Schools with few to no students currently using such treatments had much less of an issue, but it didn’t disappear, McCabe said.

“We know that the two biggest sources are leftover medications, perhaps from family members such as siblings, and asking peers, who may attend other schools,” he said.

Schools in the suburbs in all regions of the United States except the Northeast had higher rates of teen misuse of ADHD medications, as did schools where typically one or more parent had a college degree, according to the study.

Schools with more White students and those who had medium levels of student binge drinking were also more likely to see teen abuse of stimulants.

On an individual level, students who said they had used marijuana in the past 30 days were four times as likely to abuse ADHD medications than teens who did not use weed, according to the analysis.

In addition, adolescents who said they used ADHD medications currently or in the past were about 2.5% more likely to have misused the stimulants when compared with peers who had never used stimulants, the study found.

“But these findings were not being driven solely by teens with ADHD misusing their medications,” McCabe said. “We still found a significant association, even when we excluded students who were never prescribed ADHD therapy.”

Data collection for the study was through 2020. Since then, new statistics show prescriptions for stimulants surged 10% during 2021 across most age groups. At the same time, there has been a nationwide shortage of Adderall, one of the most popular ADHD drugs, leaving many patients unable to fill or refill their prescriptions.

The stakes are high: Taking stimulant medications improperly over time can result in stimulant use disorder, which can lead to anxiety, depression, psychosis and seizures, experts say.

If overused or combined with alcohol or other drugs, there can be sudden health consequences. Side effects can include “paranoia, dangerously high body temperatures, and an irregular heartbeat, especially if stimulants are taken in large doses or in ways other than swallowing a pill,” according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Research has also shown people who misuse ADHD medications are highly likely to have multiple substance use disorders.

Abuse of stimulant drugs has grown over the past two decades, experts say, as more adolescents are diagnosed and prescribed those medications — studies have shown 1 in every 9 high school seniors report taking stimulant therapy for ADHD, McCabe said.

For children with ADHD who use their medications appropriately, stimulants can be effective treatment. They are “protective for the health of a child,” Camenga said. “Those adolescents diagnosed and treated correctly and monitored do very well — they have a lower risk of new mental health problems or new substance use disorders.”

What parents and caregivers can do

The solution to the problem of stimulant misuse among middle and high school teens isn’t to limit use of the medications for the children who really need them, McCabe stressed.

“Instead, we need to look very long and hard at school strategies that are more or less effective in curbing stimulant medication misuse,” he said. “Parents can make sure the schools their kids attend have safe storage for medication and strict dispensing policies. And ask about prevalence of misuse — that data is available for every school.”

Families can also help by talking to their children about how to handle peers who approach them wanting a pill or two to party or pull an all-night study session, he added.

“You’d be surprised how many kids do not know what to say,” McCabe said. “Parents can role-play with their kids to give them options on what to say so they are ready when it happens.”

Parents and guardians should always store controlled medications in a lockbox, and should not be afraid to count pills and stay on top of early refills, he added.

“Finally, if parents suspect any type of misuse, they should contact their child’s prescriber right away,” McCabe said. “That child should be screened and assessed immediately.”

CNN
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Of the many dark gifts Showtime’s eerie hit series “Yellowjackets” serves up for us, the juiciest this season is by far the music.

The show – which bounces between a troupe of teen soccer players trapped in the 1990s Canadian wilderness after a plane crash and the survivors’ corresponding adult selves in the present day – embraces nostalgia, incorporating long-cherished tunes from the tail end of last century, with staples from Tori Amos, early Smashing Pumpkins, Massive Attack, Veruca Salt and much more.

In Sunday’s episode of “Yellowjackets,” alt-rock queen Alanis Morissette will debut a version of the show’s theme song, “No Return,” and has already released it as a single.

One of the most unexpected and successful uses of throwback music came in the first episode of Season 2 last month, when Warren Kole’s Jeff had a moment to himself in the car after an intense tryst with wife Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) – during which he rocks out hard to Papa Roach’s “Last Resort” (sure, the track actually came out in 2000, but that doesn’t take away from its retro vibe).

In an interview with CNN, the show’s music supervisor, Nora Felder, explained that the Papa Roach song selection was scripted, and “served as a perfect physical outlet for Warren whose anxious feelings were riding high while sitting alone in his garage.”

Other standout moments in the script, however, are hers to interpret, and Felder relishes the opportunity to match those moments with the right songs from the period.

“I re-immerse myself into the show’s era and spirit of the times as I start to build my playlists for the show,” she said. “The main thing I try to keep in mind is to just stay true to the story and let it tell me what it might need musically.”

Case in point, from the same episode – the placement of Amos’s signature track “Cornflake Girl,” off her groundbreaking 1994 sophomore album “Under the Pink.”

The song – which appropriately has the lyric “Things are getting kind of gross” just as teen Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) is about to ingest something unthinkable – “came to mind pretty quickly as a possibility” to Felder.

“I felt that Amos’s lyrics could serve as a befitting launchpad for the first episode’s ending – not only as a reflection of Young Shauna’s state of mind,” she noted, “but also as a reflection of the past and present moods and mentalities lived out by the other ‘Yellowjackets’ characters in Season 2.”

Felder’s work is challenging, in the sense that there is often an ideal wish-list selection for a song during a certain moment in each script, which then might change either due to something technical or because the needs of the scene evolve during production, as a result of many elements, including the actors’ performances.

“Everyone on the team always wants the best song-select possible to enhance the story,” she said. “When we get to post (production), the common question that comes up among us during the collaboration process is simply, ‘Do we think we can beat this?’”

During that collaborative process, Felder says she doesn’t “believe there is an exact roadmap into how to merge songs with any given scene or story.”

“I always say, ‘Let the picture tell you what it needs.’ (Kind of like the Wilderness I guess?)”

Another moment that feels perfectly melded to the music playing is the now-infamous ‘last supper’ scene from last week’s second episode, which boasts Radiohead’s “Climbing By The Walls” from their mindblowing 1995 album “OK Computer” on the soundtrack.

“The song seems to refer to those unspeakable monsters that can live in one’s head,” Felder noted, referencing the strange collective hallucinations the group undergoes while cannibalizing one of their own. “I can’t think of a more perfect way to hauntingly accent (that) scene, a.k.a. ‘the feast.’”

To drive home just how important music is to the specific ambient feel of “Yellowjackets,” one need look no further than the super creepy Season 2 trailer for the show, which features Florence + The Machine’s exceptional and haunting rendition of No Doubt’s timeless 1995 hit, “Just A Girl.”

“I’m such a huge fan of ‘Yellowjackets’ and this era of music, and this song especially had a huge impact on me growing up, so I was thrilled to be asked to interpret it in a ‘deeply unsettling’ way for show,” band frontwoman Florence Welch said in a statement shared with CNN.

“We tried to really add some horror elements to this iconic song to fit the tone of the show. And as someone who’s first musical love was pop punk and Gwen Stefani, it was a dream job.”

Of her collaboration with “Yellowjackets,” Morrisette, too, felt inspired by the show.

“I see parallels between ‘Yellowjackets’ and my perspective while songwriting: the sheer intensity, that going for the jugular with no fear around going for the profane,” Morissette said in a statement. “I’ve strived my entire career to support the empowerment of women and sensitives, and see the world through the female lens, and what’s so wonderful about this show is that each character is allowed to be dynamic and complex as opposed to oversimplified, reduced versions of women. I feel honoured to be a part of the legacy of ‘Yellowjackets.’”

Editor’s Note: Joe Lieberman, an independent, is a former US Senator who represented Connecticut from 1989 to 2013. He was the Democratic vice presidential nominee in the 2000 presidential election. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

CNN
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When Ralph Nader ran for president in 2000, he offered a simple rationale for a bid that would ultimately help “spoil” the election for the Democratic ticket I was privileged to be on with Al Gore. In Nader’s view, the two parties were ideologically indistinguishable.

That argument was baseless. There were significant differences in policy between the George W. Bush-Dick Cheney ticket — which ended up victorious, in part thanks to Nader — and ours. For Nader, this wasn’t really about the “two-party duopoly,” as he coined it. This was about his desire to push Gore and the Democratic Party to the left.

Today, of course, no one can reasonably argue that the two parties aren’t ideologically distinct. The core problem in Washington, DC, is that they’re too divided to get much done.

Though a majority of Americans long for the era when Republicans and Democrats worked together to find bipartisan solutions to big problems, many members of Congress refuse to work together on immigration, the debt ceiling and other issues critical to the nation, even when bipartisanship is the way to restore our common prosperity and security. Indeed, today, with Republicans controlling the House and Democrats the Senate, bipartisanship is the only way to pass any legislation.

While undoing the divisions plaguing our political system will not be simple, there is one step that can be taken — and it begins with giving voters a real alternative in the 2024 presidential election.

Most often, when Americans cast their votes for president and vice president, their ballot has only two viable tickets: one nominated by the Democratic Party and the other by the Republican Party. But what would happen if they had a third viable option?

The process for adding that third viable option is not only arduous and time-consuming, but it varies from state to state and in the District of Columbia.

Today, No Labels, a nonprofit organization that I co-chair, is laying the groundwork for such a campaign in 2024. Since early 2022, our team has been diligently working across the country to obtain ballot access for a potential No Labels ticket, typically by collecting a certain number of petition signatures from voters in each state.

If we are successful, a unity ticket — comprised of one Democrat and one Republican — could be presented to voters right next to the Republican and Democratic nominees.

We think of this as an insurance policy for the country — an option to be deployed if, and only if, both of the two major party nominees fail to offer voters a choice of candidates they’d like to vote for or a way out of the partisan divisiveness that now dominates in the nation’s capital. We will be consistently monitoring the sentiment of Americans through our own research and polling, as well as public polling, to make that determination.

In this and several other ways, No Labels’ effort could not be more different from the “spoiler” campaign that Nader attempted two decades ago.

First, if No Labels were to lend its ballot lines to a presidential ticket, the presidential candidate would be a Democrat and the vice presidential candidate would be a Republican, or vice versa. As such, it would appeal to some voters who might otherwise have voted for the Democratic ticket, and other voters who might otherwise have voted for the Republican ticket. And it would appeal to still other voters who would not have voted for either.

These nominees would be selected by a diverse and distinguished group of citizens serving on a committee — and would be ratified by delegates who would gather at the No Labels National Convention planned for April 2024. This convention will occur about six weeks after the March 5th “Super Tuesday” primaries, a day which historically has clarified who the major party nominees will be.

Second, No Labels’ 2024 effort is not designed to push the Democratic nominees to the left or Republican candidates to the right. Rather, it’s intended to force one or both parties to appeal to America’s growing commonsense majority. If they don’t, our ballot line will create the opening for a unity ticket that will.

According to recent polling by CNN, the number of individuals who identify as independent is on the rise, now comprising 41% of the electorate — compared to only 28% who described themselves as Democrats and 31% who described themselves as Republicans. These numbers are more evidence that there could be a potential path to victory for an independent ticket in 2024.

But if there doesn’t appear to be such a path in the months ahead, No Labels will stand down, focusing instead on the work we have done over the last decade to elect and organize members of the House and Senate who have demonstrated the courage to reach across the aisle — including members of the bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus.

It seems the Biden administration already may be beginning to recognize the imperative of appealing to the commonsense majority. President Joe Biden recently signed into law a Republican measure to strike down a Washington, DC, crime bill reducing penalties for those who commit violent crimes, and he announced more stringent border control policies.

Our hope is that the Republicans jockeying for their party’s nomination will similarly see the need to reach out beyond their base instead of appealing to divisive policies and politics.

In the end, No Labels hopes not to have to offer our ballot line to an independent unity ticket. We want the parties to come to their senses. But judging from the angry and apocalyptic reactions of strategists in both parties at the thought of No Labels’ insurance policy, it is clear that party leaders now know that there could be a political cost to ignoring the commonsense majority. And that’s a reason to hope for a better future for our government and our country.