Creating Juvenile Zombies, Florida-style

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http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/05/28/2240617/creating.html

Miami

Herald

Creating

juvenile zombies, Florida-style

May 28, 2011

By Fred Grimm

They’re children

of the new Florida ethic. Zombie kids warehoused on the cheap

in the state’s juvenile lock-ups. Kept quiet, manageable and

addled senseless by great dollops of anti-psychotic drugs.

A relatively small

percentage of young inmates pumped full of pills actually

suffer from the serious psychiatric disorders that the FDA

allows to be treated by these powerful drugs. But adult doses

of anti-psychotic drugs have a tranquilizing effect on teenage

prisoners. Prescribing anti-psychotics for so many rowdy kids

may be a reckless medical practice, but in an era of budget

cuts and staffing shortages, it makes for smart economics.

Florida fairly

inundates juvenile offenders with this stuff.

The Palm Beach

Post reported last week that the Florida Department of

Juvenile Justice has been buying twice as many doses of the

powerful anti-psychotic Seroquel as it does ibuprofen. As if

the state anticipated more outbreaks of schizophrenia than

headaches or minor muscle pain.

The Post found

that Florida purchased 326,081 tablets of Seroquel, Abilify,

Risperdal and other antipsychotic drugs during a two-year

period for the boys and girls who occupy the 2,300 beds in

state-run residential facilities. (Most of the state’s

juvenile offenders are held in jails operated by for-profit

contractors. Records revealing the quantity of medications

that private companies pour down their prisoners’ gullets were

not available.)

Such drugs, meant

for adults, are known to send children into suicidal despair,

along with risking heart problems, weight gain, diabetes and

facial tics. Yet, the DJJ and its contract psychiatrists push

them willynilly onto their young wards.

It’s not as if

state officials have been unaware of the risks facing children

prescribed “off label” uses (unapproved by the FDA) of these

pharmaceuticals. Even as the state doled out Seroquel like

candy to kids in DJJ jails, the Florida Attorney General’s

office was entering into a lawsuit with 36 other states

against drug manufacturer AstraZeneca for promoting dangerous,

off-label uses of Seroquel for treating both the young and the

elderly. (AstraZeneca agreed to settle the lawsuit in March

for $68.5 million and to stop marketing the drug for

unauthorized uses.)

It was as if the

schizophrenics most in need of Seroquel were roaming the halls

of government, not the juvenile jails.

“This is the face

of all these budget cuts; what happens when you eliminate

social workers and prison guards,” said Broward Public

Defender Finkelstein. He suspects that DJJ has

compensated for the staff shortages at state lockups by

pumping “the most powerful drugs known to man into children

who have not been diagnosed for psychiatric problems.”

Finkelstein says

he assigned two of his staff attorneys last week to visit

juvenile lock-ups and investigate what he calls the

“zombification” of young offenders who had been represented by

his office.

Florida Attorney

General Pam Bondi opened her own investigation last week.

Bondi’s staff attorneys are interested in the Post’s report

that psychiatrists prescribing off-label uses of such

astounding quantities of the profitable anti-psychotics for

DJJ prisoners (at taxpayer expense) had been greased by drug

manufacturers with some $250,000 in gifts and speaking fees.

The DJJ drug

scandal seems all the more maddening considering that it

follows a similar uproar just two years ago after the suicide

of a seven-year-old Margate foster child. Young Myers

had been given adult dosages of three anti-psychotics before

he hung himself.

The Myers

Task Force, made up of child advocates, state officials,

political leaders and judges from across the state, spent a

year investigating whether the Florida Department of Children

and Families had administered dangerous drugs as “chemical

restraints” for troublesome foster children.

kids, as it

turned out, weren’t the only victims of the on-the-cheap

ethic. But don’t think of children reduced to zombies. Think

of all the money we save on prison guards.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/editorials/end-juvenile-injustices-1503285.html?cxtype=rss_editorials

Palm Beach Post

End

juvenile injustices

By Rhonda Swan

May 27, 2011

New Florida

Department of Juvenile Justice Secretary Wansley Walters is

right to examine the department's use of antipsychotic

medications following a Palm Beach Post investigation showing

that children in DJJ care are being plied with heavy doses of

the powerful drugs.

"We will look at

everything that surrounds this issue," Ms. Walters said in an

interview. "We're concerned that any child in our care be

given the best medical assistance possible, appropriate to his

medical needs." DJJ's inspector general will conduct the

investigation. Ms. Walters said one of her first acts was to

ensure that the inspector general report to the state and not

to her. Good move. "That way," she said, "they can't give me a

report that I simply stick in a drawer."

As The Post's

LaForgia reported in stories last Sunday and Monday,

psychiatrists hired by the DJJ prescribed antipsychotics

before federal regulators approved them for children. The

drugs can cause suicidal thoughts in children and other

dangerous side effects. Myers, a 7-year-old who was

taking a combination antipsychotic and antidepressant, hanged

himself two years ago in his Broward County foster home. The

FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit concluded that the drugs "may

have contributed to his actions directly prior to and during

his accidental death."

The Post found

that the DJJ doesn't track prescriptions, and doesn't know

whether doctors are medicating children because it's necessary

or because it makes them easier to control. It's unclear

whether the doses prescribed were appropriate or unusually

high. The department should institute a tracking system, and

the investigation should answer these questions.

The Post also

found that some prescribing doctors have taken thousands of

dollars in speaker fees and other gifts from drug makers. In

two years, the four highest-paid psychiatrists received nearly

$200,000. Three continue to treat children in state jails and

residential programs. Studies have shown that even small gifts

can influence a physician's prescribing practices.

Pharmaceutical firms spend nearly $30 billion a year

nationwide to market their drugs, most on dinners and trips

for doctors, and samples for patients.

In 2008 and 2009,

Florida doctors received $21.7 million from just the eight

drug companies, including AstraZeneca, that disclose payments.

More than 70 companies do not disclose. AstraZeneca makes

Seroquel, one of the most popular drugs prescribed by DJJ

psychiatrists. Florida doctors got more than $1.5 million from

the drug maker in those two years.

State legislators,

who wrongly prohibited pharmaceutical companies from donating

money for the state's drug database, should prohibit them from

attempting to bribe doctors - particularly those who work for

the state - to prescribe their drugs. And on behalf of the

children and their parents, Ms. Walters should make changes in

drug policy her start on reforming an agency that has been

mismanaged for most of its nearly two-decades-old existence.