U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Auburn) is sounding the alarm on an issue he believes is negatively affecting the mental health of children in America.
The senator discussed the issue recently on the “Back to the People” Show with Nicole Shanahan.
“The one thing I’ve seen in real time about the chemicals that we’re giving our kids,” Tuberville said.
“But back when I first got into coaching, you would bring 25 or 30 new players into my football team every year, and we would set them down and talk to them and their parents, ‘You know, what? What kind of drugs are you on? I mean, are you taking, you know, over the counter, any prescription drugs?’ And you know, up to about the year 2000 to maybe 2005 every once while you’d have somebody on whether it was insulin or whatever, but the last few years up in probably from 2005 to 2015-16, over half the kids that you’d sit down with that you’re bringing in were on Ritalin, Adderall. I mean, we are so chemically dependent, and it’s now starting with our younger kids.”
Tuberville said he’s worried about young people in America being too “chemically dependent.”
Senator Tommy Tuberville: “We are so chemically dependent, and it’s now starting with our younger kids.”
“One day, it’s going to just explode on us—”
Nicole Shanahan: “It’s exploding on us now.”
“The school shooters … if you just take a random sampling, almost all of them are… pic.twitter.com/eoCIrycCcZ
— Holden Culotta (@Holden_Culotta) January 26, 2025
“We can’t stay down this path, because who knows what these drugs are going to do to you when, after you get out of school and you continue to take those when you’re 35, 40, 50, years old,” he said. “There’s got to be some kind of residual that they’re going to get from taking all these drugs for so many years at a young age…We’re in a age of I would call, I guess it would call it dependency, not on parents, but on chemicals.”
Tuberville also believes that the growth in mental health among American children could be related to these kinds of prescription drugs.
“Don’t get me started on the mental health problem because I tell you what, I’ve seen kids attitudes change,” he argued. “When I dealt with 120 [kids] a year for 35 years, and it was just devastating to watch, watch it creep and then just run into the our system. In terms of kids that that were having problems, they really had problems. As you said, it’s not a second amendment problem whatsoever. It is a mental health problem that we’re having this country that nobody wants to to address. And it’s getting worse and worse.”
The senator said many of the mental health issues in children can be solved without medication.
“You know what they want to do? They want to drug more and put more drugs in these kids instead of finding out really what in the world is going on, and it usually starts at home, social media, all the things now that we have it at our disposal, you know, the telephone. This, this, this crazy machine that we carry around in her hand. And we all do it, not just kids, but it is something that’s it’s addictive and it’s something that they depend on. And it’s gonna get worse and worse.”
Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” weekdays 9-11 a.m. on WVNN. You can follow him on Twitter @Yaffee
