CONWAY — The four pills that police say a University of Central Arkansas student stole, leading to the resignation of UCA’s chief of staff and felony charges, were stimulants increasingly abused by students nationwide.
The pills were Adderall, or the generic equivalent of the prescription medication, an amphetamine prescribed to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, also known as ADHD.
Along with other stimulants such as methamphetamine, authorities say Adderall is a growing problem, especially among young people who do not suffer from ADHD but use the medicine to stay awake and study longer in a bid to make better grades.
“This is a major issue around the country,” said Dr. Wilson Compton, epidemiology director at the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Indeed, a national study of about 45,400 students in eighth, 10th and 12th grades found that, for 12th-graders, Adderall was among the drugs most abused in 2012.
The annual University of Michigan survey found that 7.6 percent of the roughly 14,300 12th-graders surveyed reported having abused Adderall in the past year. That compared with 5.4 percent in 2009, the first year the university asked about Adderall.
“Access and availability of these drugs [are] not difficult,” Compton said. “These are stimulants. They keep you awake when your body would tell you to go to sleep.”
The UCA theft, which took place about 1:30 a.m. June 9 of last year, was not the first time someone stole Adderall from the same UCA employee, Andrew Linn.
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette learned of the earlier theft and other drug-related disclosures during a review of records relating to Linn’s firing last week.
Using security video footage, UCA police said they identified the burglar in the June 9 theft of Linn’s four pills as Cameron Stark, a former dean’s list student.
Stark, 24, was granted limited immunity from prosecution in that case after police said he turned over two keys that he said Chief of Staff Jack Gillean had given him so that Stark could steal tests from professors’ offices.
Days later, Gillean, 56, resigned. In October, he was charged with four felonies, including three counts of commercial burglary. He has pleaded innocent.
No drug related charges have been filed against Gillean or anyone else in the UCA investigation.
During a recorded interview with UCA officials Dec. 13, Cheryl Lyons, UCA’s financial-aid director, said Linn had told her about filing a report with UCA police “the second time that the drugs were stolen.”
In a separate interview that day, Linn, 28, said he had also noticed some Adderall missing from his financial aid office in December 2011 or January 2012 but did not tell police then.
“I was like, where did it all go?” Linn recalled. “It wasn’t all gone, but those prescriptions, I mean, I don’t use them every day, so they usually last longer than a month.”
Linn said he was “about 15 days short” on the pills.
“I suspected something, but I had no proof,” he said. “For all I [knew], I could have lost them, but I didn’t think so.”
Linn said he mentioned the problem to Lyons.
“Were Cameron and you close enough acquaintances that he would have known you kept Adderall in your office?” Katie Henry, UCA’s interim general counsel, asked Linn.
“Uh, yes, probably,” Linn replied. “It’s not because I say, ‘Hey, I keep it in my desk drawer,’ but he knew that I took it.”
“Did he ever ask you for some?” Henry asked.
“Yes, and I told him no - multiple times,” Linn said.
“So, you never gave him any?” Henry asked.
“No,” Linn answered.
“Willingly?” she asked.
“No,” he said.
Then, referring to Stark and Gillean, Linn said, “They came to my house looking for them [Adderall pills].
“They called and they called and they called, and I just kinda didn’t answer,” Linn added. “The next thing I know they’re knocking at my door. That’s when I lived in [a] UCA house. When I heard them keying in is when I got up.”
Linn said he didn’t tell anyone about the men’s visit.
“Cameron was pushy, and Jack’s behavior was obviously ... going very erratic,” he said. “I just told them, no, I didn’t have any.”
Stark would have realized that Linn kept Adderall at work “because that was my excuse most of the time,” Linn said. “I was, like, I don’t have any, don’t have any. Leave me alone,” and, he said, he told Stark the pills were in the office.
Additional records obtained under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act show that one or more UCA officials questioned Linn’s account of the two men at his home.
Typed notes about “discrepancies” in Linn’s interview note that, while Gillean had a master key to many campus buildings, he did not have one to housing.
A separate, printed note says, “They [Gillean and Stark] couldn’t have keyed into Andrew’s house [because] it takes a housing master.”
When asked if there were other cases when his pills turned up missing, Linn said he didn’t notice if they were.
“If he [Stark] took some, it was a small enough” amount to go unnoticed, Linn said.
Asked if he had suspected Stark the first time Linn noticed pills missing, Linn replied, “I didn’t. I really didn’t know if anybody had stolen anything.”
He said that at the time, he didn’t know how someone would have entered his office when the building was closed.
“This was before I knew about the key,” Linn said.
In the early spring of 2012, Linn told police that an intoxicated Stark had made a statement that suggested that Stark had Gillean’s master key.
Linn said he “sat on that a couple of days” before he told a police officer. “It immediately raised a red flag in my mind” about the previously missing pills, he said.
Police unsuccessfully tried to validate Linn’s tip at the time, a UCA internal audit found.
During the interview with Henry and Graham Gillis, associate vice president of human resources, Linn said he considered Stark “a personal acquaintance. ... I wouldn’t call him a friend.”
Text messages between Linn and Stark reveal a relationship close enough that they joked about Stark’s “excess [student financial] aid,”made bawdy jokes and discussed medication.
Those messages include one from March 9, 2011, in which Stark said he and “Jack” - a reference to Gillean - were going to a restaurant, and invited Linn along. Then, on March 18, 2011, Stark asked Linn, “Is the Dr. Screening his calls again?”
On May 3, 2011, Linn texted Stark saying, “Hey, got your call last night. Was in the process of moving. What’s up?”
Stark replied, “Was going to see if you had any medicine. I found some, though. I’m done [with] my exams now though.”
“Sorry man,” Linn said. “Hardly had my phone on me all evening.”
On June 10, 2011, Stark, a former Marine, texted, “Can I get medicine from you Sunday? I have a test Monday and have drill all weekend.”
The text records do not show a response from Linn.
In August 2011, Stark told Linn he went to see a clinical psychologist.
Almost two hours later, Linn sent a text saying, “Ahh. So is that enough?”
Stark said, “No. Dr wouldnt give me [redacted] Gave me [redacted].”
UCA marked out some medical information in the documents because of a federal privacy law.
Stark asked Linn who his doctor was, and seconds later Linn replied, “They like that stuff.”
Later, after two redacted texts from Linn, Linn typed, “They recommended it for me. ... He overrode.”
“Cool,” Stark said. “I’m gonna have to explain why I had amphetamines in my system to the Marines.”
“Just be honest,” Linn said.
On April 2, 2012, Stark wrote, “Do you have an adderall to spare? I’m in a bind.”
“I sure don’t man,” Linn replied, followed by something UCA redacted.
Dr. Michael Mancino, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, said Adderall has “significant potential for addiction abuse.”
“Stimulants do enhance performance,” Mancino said. “But the problem is when they overtake it, which is very easy to do, it can actually cause problems with performance.”
Mancino said one problem that doctors face, especially among college-aged students, is that it’s easy to fake ADHD symptoms because the diagnosis is “based on self-reports,” not medical tests.
Symptoms of the disorder include problems with mental focusing, concentration and paying attention to details, trouble completing tasks that require organization, not remembering appointments or other obligations, fidgeting, squirming and even procrastination, he said.
With a child, Mancino said, doctors can ask parents and teachers about the patients.
“When you’ve got an adult who walks into your office alone, there’s no corroborating source that you can get,” he said.
Mancino believes the drug is being “over prescribed,” but the solution isn’t simple.
“If you’ve got a person that walks in and gives you a classic history for ADHD, you would be negligent if you didn’t provide treatment for him,” Mancino said.
Fran Flener, Arkansas’ drug director, said the state doesn’t specifically track Adderall abuse. But she stressed that prescribed medicine “is every bit as dangerous” as other drugs when it is misused.
“Prescription drug abuse is our fastest-growing drug abuse problem in the nation and in Arkansas because of the myth of safety,” Flener said. “When you perceive something as being safe, then you’ll take more of it.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/11/2013