(a) I Liheslaturan Guåhan finds that more and more schools and school districts across the country are resorting to policies that allow non-medical school personnel to require or recommend that students receive controversial psychotropic medical treatment as a means to control children suspected of having behavior disorders. Such drugs include amphetamines such as Ritalin, antihypertensive drugs such as clonidine, tricyclic antidepressants, Selective Serotonin Uptake inhibitors such as Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft and neuroleptics such as Haldol and Thorazine. More and more medical studies are revealing that many of these substances have little or no effect in treating maladies such as ADHD and may cause severe harm to a child.

(b) In many school districts in the United States, teachers, administrators and counselors continue to resort to extraordinary means to require parents to force-medicate their children. Such
means include suspension or expulsion of the student or reporting the student’s parents to municipal authorities on child abuse or neglect charges for refusing to subject their children to these medications. I Liheslatura further finds that decisions that involve the treatment of children should be a personal one between parents, their children and their children’s physicians and not the school system.

(c) It is the intent of I Liheslatura to prohibit any non-medical school personnel from recommending the use of psychotropic drugs for any child, and to protect parents or guardians who refuse to administer psychotropic drugs to their child from having said child taken into custody by the Child Protective Services Division, unless such refusal causes the child to be neglected or abused as defined by public law.

SOURCE: Added by P.L. 30-055:XII:31 (Sept. 4, 2009).

2018 NOTE: Subsection designations added pursuant to authority by 1
GCA § 1606.