According to a report from New Zealand’s TVNZ, a high school boy bought Ritalin to stay awake and play Xbox 360 games, but ended up in the hospital. The report claims that the boy was brought into the hospital "White as a sheet and hyperventilating" after he used a "makeshift device" to snort Ritalin he scored from a classmate. The 15-year-old told his father that he obtained the drug through a classmate and had been using it for quite some time. His father claims that he later found "two empty capsules, a stripped-down pen nib for snorting and a metallic crushing device in his son's room."
Though the father and son managed to get on television and in the press both remain unidentified. The father claims that he contacted the school about the incident.
Challenged about his drug use, the son told his father that Ritalin was "not addictive".
"Being such a traumatic, emotional experience of thinking my boy was dying, to 'he is snorting drugs,' put me in shock," the father told the news media. "I had a hundred questions but was too shocked and drained to address them."
"If they have Ritalin in their houses it needs to be kept in a secure place," the father added, speaking of what parents need to do to control access to prescription drugs. "They all think their kids are angels."
For its part, the school claims that all prescription drugs are administered and controlled by staff and students are not allowed to carry it around school. Principal Ross Sinclair added that the school was investigating the alleged Ritalin incident but was hampered by the father's refusal to identify himself or the boy. Sinclair also denied the allegations that drug use was rife within his school.
Source: TVNZ
