> No one doubts ADHD stimulants’ potential for abuse and addiction. Adderall’s active ingredient is amphetamine, a drug that functions in some ways like cocaine. Both deliver excess dopamine to the brain, enhancing motivation and concentration, and the cocainelike effect of stimulants is enhanced when they’re snorted. Hence the long-standing nickname for Concerta and Ritalin: Diet Coke. “There is a fear that the overuse of prescribed amphetamines could lead to the equivalent of another opioid epidemic,” said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, who served as the FDA’s principal deputy commissioner under Barack Obama.

Concerta and Ritalin contain methylphenidate, not amphetamine. This is correctly stated elsewhere in the article, so I don't know why they're conflated here.

> In one of these rooms, Ascent’s founder and CEO — Sudhakar Vidiyala, Meghana’s father — points to a hulking unit that he says is worth $1.5 million. It’s used to produce time-release Concerta tablets with three colored layers, each dispensing the drug’s active ingredient at a different point in the tablet’s journey through the body.

Sort of; see "System Components and Performance" in [0]. There's an overcoat which contains an initial dose of methylphenidate that dissolves quickly. Under that, a three-layer core: two drug layers and one pump layer for an osmotic-controlled delivery system [1]. As the pill is processed through the body and into the gut, water is absorbed into the pump layer through a semipermeable membrane which causes the pump layer to gradually expand, pushing methylphenidate from the two drug layers out through a laser-drilled hole over time. It's a cool little mechanism.

[0] https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2007/02...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osmotic-controlled_release_ora...