I'd ask you to define "mostly safe", but I was just commenting, not looking to get into a debate about pharmacology.
When most American families have a child diagnosed with ADD/ADHD, chemical solution is the answer. Be it, Ritalin, or even, let's say, marijuana, the chemical solution treats the symptoms, not the condition. There are many, many alternatives that include alternative means of absorbing education, adjusting to social setting and so on. These alternatives are not in dispute...they just require attention and commitment. Parents either prefer the idea of drugs...or they're never even informed of the existence of the alternatives.
If you had a rotten tooth, antibiotics and pain meds would take care of the pain every time it becomes abscessed, but relying on that long term would be absolutely foolish...and if your dentist never even insisted on treating the tooth, you'd get a new dentist.
I guess a good analog would be to imagine that a doctor diagnoses a dyslexic and then recommends only that parents read to him. Would that be a solution? Sure. But it wouldn't treat the condition. The obligation to the parent should be to give the child the skills to cope with the disorder. Not create a widened gap between him and those without the disorder.
